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Great Sayings By Great 

Lawyers 'J 

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Immortal Thoughts Snatched drom Oblivion 

G.*^.^Clark 


I 


“7/ the grain was separated from the chaff which fills 
the works of writers, what is truly valuable would he 
to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill 
to a mountain^* 

— Edmund Burke 




THE LAWYERS’ INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING CO. 

I KANSAS CITY, MO., U. S. A. 


The Number of this Book, 
limited to 3,000 copies, is 







6 



Copyrighted 

by 

G. J. CLARK 
1922 


R. M. RIGBY PTG. CO. PRESS: 


LAWYERS’ INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING CO. 



©Cl. A(! 74 9 5 22^ 





Foreword 


Immortal Trovgrts—S ayings by the great leaders of the 
legal profession —are the fruition of a conscientious and enjoy¬ 
able lifelong study of the Great Beacon Lights of Jurisprudence 
covering a period of eight centuries. 

Condensed Excerpts— The Actual Facts concerning the 
characters, whether pleasing or otherwise (the essence of 
their histories), are here recorded, enabling the thinking reader 
to form his own conclusions. 1 his method seems to the author 
much more satisfactory^ than reading the fulsome praise and 
ingenious cogitations of flattering biographers. 

To compress so much within one volume is an audacious 
task, but the thirty-three years and the unremitting effort 
are deemed justifiable as. Dr. Samuel Johnson counts him a 
benefactor of mankind who condenses the great thoughts and 
rules of life into short sentences that are easily impressed on 
the memory and recur promptly to the mind.’’ 


Naturally in these delineations of the great lights of the 
bench and bar of America and Britain, omissions will be 
noticed and when observed, let the apt line from Pope be 
applied: “To err is human, to forgive divine/’ 

Blank spaces have been filled in with extra matter in 
addition to the Monographs. These excerpts, epitomized in 
the “Additional Table of Contents,” and included in the 
“General Index,” it is believed will increase the value of the 
book as a reference work. 






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GENERAL TABLE 

OF 

CONTENTS 


GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 


A bbot, Chas. (Lord Tenter- 
den), Eng., 1, 2. 
Abinger, Lord (Janies 
Scarlett), Eng., 3. 

Adams, John, Mass., 3-8. 

Adams, John Quincy, Mass., 9-16. 
Adams, Chas. Francis, Jr., Mass., 
17. 

Ames, Fisher, Alass., 19-20. 
Appleton, John, Me., 21-23. 
Ashburton, Lord (John Dunning), 
Eng., 249-50. 

Atwood, John H., Mo., 25-6. 

B acon, Francis, Eng., 27-32. 

Baldwin, Roger Sherman, 
Conn., 33-4. 

Baldwin, Joseph G., author of 
“Flush Times of Alabama and 
Mississippi,” 552, 558. 

Baldwin, Simeon E., Conn., 35-6. 
Bartlett, Ichabod, N. H., 37-39. 
Bayard, Thos. F., Del., 41-2. 
Beach, Wm. A., N. Y., 43-4. 
Benjamin, Judah P., La., 45-48. 
Bentham, Jeremy, Eng., 49. 
Benton, Thos. H., Mo., 51-55. 
Binney, Horace, Pa., 56-8. 
Bishop, Joel Prentiss, Mass., 59. 
Black, Jeremiah S., Pa., 60-4. 
Blackstone, Sir William, Eng., 
65-7. 

Bleckley, Logan E., Ga., 68-9. 
Borah, Wm. E., Idaho, 70. 
Boudinot, Elias, Pa., 71. 

Bradish, Luther, N. Y., 72. 
Bradley, Joseph Philo, N. J., 
73-6. 

Brady, Jas. T., N. Y., 77-80. 
Bramwell, Baron (Geo. Wm. 
Wilshire), 81. 

Brandeis, Louis Bembitz, Wash., 
D. C., 82. 

Breckenridge, W. C. P., Ky., 83. 
Breese, Sidney, Ill., 84-6. 

Brewer, David J., Kans., 87. 
Brewster, Benj. H., Pa., 88-9. 
Broadhead, Jas. O., Mo., 90. 
Brougham, Sir Henry, Eng., 91-3. 
Brown, David Paul, Pa., 94-7. 
Bryan, Wm Jennings, Neb., 98. 
Bryce, James, Eng,, 99-104. 
Burges, Tristam, R. I., 105. 

Burr, Aaron, N. Y., 106-8. 


Busche, Charles Kendal, Ire., 
109-10. 

Butler, Benj. F., Mass., 111-12. 
Butler, Wm. Allen., N. Y., 113-15. 

C ALHOUN, John C., S. C., 116. 
Camden, Lord (Charles 
Pratt), Eng., 117-19. 
Campbell, John, Eng., 120. 
Carpenter, Matt H., Wis., 121-27. 
Carson, Hampton L., Pa., 128-9. 
Carter, Jas. C., N. Y., 130-2. 
Catron, John, Tenn., 133. 

Chase, Salmon P., Ohio, 134-6, 
Choate, Jos. H., N. Y., 137-55. 
Choate, Rufus, Mass., 156-63. 
Claire, Lord (John Fitzgibbon), 
Ire., 283. 

Clarke, Sir Edward, Eng., 164-67. 
Clay, Henry, Ky., 168-71. 
Clayton, John M., Del., 172. 
Clinton, Henry L., N. Y., 173. 
Cockburn, Alexander, Eng., 175-6 
Coke, Sir Edward, Eng., 177-81. 
Coleridge, John Duke, Eng., 182. 
Conkling, Roscoe, N. Y., 183-4. 
Conwell, Russell H., Pa., 185. 
Cooley, Thos. M., Mich., 186-7. 
Coolidge, Calvin, Mass., 188. 
Corwin, Thos., Ohio, 189-95. 
Crittenden, John J., Ky., 196-7. 
Curran, John Philpot, Ire., 198- 
205. 

Curtis, Benj. R., Mass., 206-10. 
Curtis, Geo. Ticknor, Mass., 211. 
Cushing, Caleb, Mass., 212-16. 

D ana, Richard H., Mass, 217. 
Daniel, John W., Va., 218. 
Darrow, Clarence, Ill., 219. 
Deady, Matthew P., Ore., 220- 
21 . 

Dean, Oliver H., Mo., 222-23. 
Delmas, Dolphin Michael, Cal., 
224. 

Denman, Thomas, Eng., 225-6. 
Depew, Chauncey M., N. Y., 
227-8 

Dexter, Wirt, Ill., 229. 

Dexter, Samuel, Mass., 230-35. 
Dickinson, Daniel S., N. Y., 236. 
Dillon, John F., N. Y., 237-8. 
Doe, Charles, N. H., 239-40. 
Dougherty, Daniel, Pa., 241. 
Douglas, Stephen A., Ill., 242-48. 
Dunning, John (Lord Ashburton), 
Eng., 249-50. 


GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 


XI 


E llsworth, Oliver, (3onn., 251- 
53. 

Emmet, Thomas Addis, Ire., 
^ 254-56. 

Eldon, Lord (John Scott), Eng., 
257-8. 

Ellenborough, Lord (Edward 
Law), Eng., 259-61. 

Erskine, Thos., Eng,, 262-71. 
Evarts, Win. M., N. Y., 272-75. 
Ewing, Thomas, Ohio, 276-7. 

F essenden, Wm. P., Me., 278- 

9. 

Field, David Dudley, N. Y., 
280-81. 

Field, Stephen J., Cal., 282. 
Fitzgibbon, John (Lord Claire), 
Ire., 283. 

Flanigan, John H., Mo., 284. / 
Follett, Sir Williamj Eng., 285. 
Foraker, Jos. Benson, Ohio, 286. 
Fox, Charles James, Eng., 287. 
Frve, Wm. P., Me., 288. 

Fuller, Melville W., Ill., 289-90. 

G arfield, James A., Ohio, 
291-4 

H ardin, Ben., Ky., 321. 

Harding, George, Pa., 322-3. 
Harmon, Jiidson, Ohio, 324. 
Hayne, Robt. Y., S. C., 325. 
Hemphill, John, Tex., 326. 
Henry, Patrick, Va., 327-31. 
Hill, Benj. H., Ga., 332-3. 

Hill, Nicholas, N. Y., 334. 
Hoadly, George, Ohio, 335-6. 
Hoar, Bartholomew, Ire., 337. 
Hoar, George F., Mass., 338-40. 
Hoar, E. Rockwood, Mass., 341. 
Hobbes, Thos., Eng., 342. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 
Mass., 343-4. 

Holt, John, Eng., 345-7. 

Horton, Albert H., 348. 

Houston, Temple, Okla., 349-50. 
Hubbard, Richard D., Conn., 351. 
Hubbard, Thos. H., Me., 352. 
Hughes, Chas. E., N. Y., 353-9. 
Hughes, Wm. T., Ill., 360-1. 
Hyde, Edward (Lord Clarenden), 
Eng., 362-4. 

I NGALLS, Jas. J., Kans., 365-7. 
Ingersoll, Robt. G., Ill., 368- 
76. 

Ingraham, Robt. J., Mo., 377-81. 
Iredell, Jas., N. C., 382. 

Irwin, W. W., Minn., 383. 


J AY, John, N. Y., 384-6. 

Jefferson, Thos., Va., 387-91. 
Jessel, Sir George, Eng., 392. 
Jones, Sir Wm., Eng., 393-5. 

K ellogg, Frank B., Minn., 396. 
Kent, James, N. Y., 397- 
400. 

Kenyon, Lloyd, Eng., 40L 
King, Rufus, N. Y., 402-4. 
Knott, J. Proctor, Ky., 405-6. 

L amar, L. Q. C., Miss., 407-9. 
Lane, Franklin K., Cal., 
410-11. 

Lansing, Robt., N. Y., 417-2L 
Legare, Hugh S., S. C., 412-16. 
Lehmann, Frederick W., 422-3. 
Lewis, Jas. Hamilton, Ill., 424-5. 
Lewis, Wm. Draper, N. Y., 426-7. 
Lewis, Justin, Pa., 428. 

Lincoln, Abraham, Ill., 429-41. 
Livingston, Robt. R., N. Y., 442. 
Long, John D., Mass., 443. 

jl^ACKiNTosH, James, Eng., 444- 

McSweeney, John, Ohio, 
446-9. 

Mac Veagh, Wayne, Pa., 450-1. 
Madison, James, Va., 452-4. 
Mansfield, Lord (William 
Murray), Eng., 455-8. 
Marshall, John, Va., 459-64. 
Marshall, Thos. F., Ky., 465. 
Martin, Luther, Md., 467-69. 
Mason, Jeremiah, N. H., 470-75. 
Matthews, Stanley, Ohio, 476-7. 
Metcalf, Geo. P., Ohio, 479-81. 
Miller, Sam’l F., la., 482-9. 
Monroe, James, Va., 490. 

Morgan, John T., Ala., 491-3. 
Morton, Oliver P., Ind., 494. 

N isbett, Eugenius A., Ga., 
495. 

North, John North, Ire., 

496. 

O LNEY, Richard, Mass., 497. 
O’Connell, Daniel, Ire., 498- 
506. 

O’Conor, Charles, N. Y., 507-14. 
Otis, James, Mass., 515. 

P ARKER, Cortlandt, N. J., 516- 
17. 

Parsons, Theophilus, Mass., 
518-21. 

Peck, Geo. R., Kans., 522-4. 


GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 


xii 


Phelps, Edward, Jr., Vt., 525-27. 
Phillips, Charles, Ire.,'528-30. 
Phillips, Jno. F., Mo., 531-33. 
Phillips, Wendell, Mass., 534-5. 
Pickard, C. F. M., Wash., 536. 
Pierrepont, Edwards, N. Y., 537. 
Pinkney, Wm., Md., 538-42. 
Plunket, Wm. C., Ire., 543-6. 
Pollock, Sir Frederick, Eng., 547. 
Porter, Jno. K., N. Y., 548-9. 
Prentice, George D., Ky., 550. 
Prentiss, S. S., Miss., 551-6. 
Prueitt, Moman, Okla., 557-8. 

R anney, Rufus P.,Ohio, 559-61. 
Rantoul, Robt., Jr., Mass., 
562-5. 

Raynor, Isidor, Md., 566. 
Redfield, Isaac F., Vt., 567. 

Reed, James A., Mo., 568-73. 
Reed, Thos. B., Me., 574-8. 
Robertson, George, Ky., 579-80. 
Romilly, Samuel, Eng., 581-4. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, N. Y., 
585-8. 

Ross, John, Pa., 589. 

Root, Elihu, N. Y., 590-601. 
Russell, Sir Charles (Lord 
Killowen), Eng., 602-11. 
Rutledge, John, S. C., 612. 

Ryan, Edward, G., Wis., 613-17. 

S CARLETT, James (Lord Abing- 
er)., Eng., 618-21. 

Scott, Henry W., Kans., 622. 
Scott, Jas. Brown, Washington, 
D. C., 623-4. 

Selden, John, Eng., 625-8. 
Seward, Wm. H., N. Y., 629-34. 
Sharswood, George, Pa., 635-6. 
Sherwood, Thos. A., Mo., 637-39. 
Shaw, Lemuel, Mass., 640-8. 
Shaw, Leslie M., la., 649. 
SheUabarger, Samuel, Washing¬ 
ton, D. C,, 650. 

Shepard, Elliot F., N. Y., 651. 
Sheppard, Morris, Tex., 652-3. 
Sherman, John, Ohio, 658. 

Smith, Jeremiah, N. H., 655-6. 
Stanton, Edwin M., Ohio, 657-62. 
Stephens, Alexander H., Ga., 663- 
8 . 

Stevens, Thaddeus, Pa., 669-676. 
Storrs, Emory A., Ill., 677-86. 
Story, Joseph, Mass., 687-95. 


Sugden, Sir Edward (Lord St. 

Leonards), Eng., 696. 

Swayne, Noah H., Ohio, 698. 

T aft, Wm. H., Ohio,- 699. 

Talfourd, Sir Thos. N., 
Eng., 700. 

Taney, Roger B., Md., 701-3. 
Thurlow, Edward, Eng., 704-6. 
Tichenor, Charles O., Mo., 707. 
Tilden, Samuel J., N. Y., 708-11. 
Toombs, Robert, Ga., 712. 

Tracy, Benjamin F., N. Y., 713- 
14. 

Trumbull, Lyman, Ill., 715-21. 
Tucker, John Randolph, Va., 
722-3. 

U NTERMYER, Samuel, N. Y., 

724-28. 

V ANCE, Zebulon B., N. C., 
729-30. 

Vest, George, G., Mo., 
731-2. 

Voorhees, Daniel W., Ind.,* 733- 
35. 

W ALKER, Timothy, Ohio, 736. 
Wanamaker, R. M., Ohio, 
737-8. 

Washburn, Emory, Mass., 739. 
Webber, A. R., Ohio, 740-41. 

• Webster, Daniel, Mass., 742-56. 
Webster, Richard (Lord Alver- 
stone), Eng., 757-8. 
Wedderburn, Alexander (Lord 
Loughborough), Eng., 759-60. 
Wharton, Francis, Pa., 761. 
White, Edward Douglas, La., 762 
Wilmot, J. E., Eng., 763. 

Wilson, James, Pa., 764. 

Wilson, Jeremiah M., Ind., 765. 
Wilson, Woodrow, Va., 766. 
Wirt, William, Md., 767-70. 
Wolcott, Edward O., Col., 771-2. 
Woodbury, Levi, N. H., 773-5. 
Woolworth, Jas. M., Neb., 776. 
Wythe, George, Va., 777-9. 

ELVERTON, Barry (Lord Avon- 
more), Ire., 780. 

York, Sir Philip (Lord 
Hardwicke), Eng., 781-2. 



ADDITIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS—“FILLERS’ ’ 


A bbott, Austin, N. Y., “Suc¬ 
cess in Law,” 553. 
Abbott, Lyman, N. Y., 
“Art,” 549. 

“Beecher’s oratory,” 588. 
“Christianity,” 566. 

“Christ’s Influence on Art,” 
558. 

“Greatness of the Bible,” 546. 
“Kinds of Oratory,” 282. 
“Library of the Bible,” 588. 
“Looking into the future,” 323. 
“Motherhood,” 428. 

“Portrait of Ids Wife,” 133. 
“Roman History, 287. 

“The Ministry the greatest 
calling,” 550. 

“Tribute to his wife,” 441. 
“What makes a Nation great,” 
565. 

“What the Bible is,” 241. 
Adams, Henry, Mass., “Sumner 
and Conkling,” 588. 

Adams, John Q., Mass., “The 
Bible,” 235. 

B acon, Francis, Eng., “His 
lYecocity,” 763. 
Barrington, Jonas, Ire., “Pen 
Picture of Curran,” 712. 
Beveridge, Albert J., Ind., “The 
Christian Religion,” 40. 
“Gibbons, v. Ogden,” 464. 
Bigelow, John, N. Y., “Benjamin 
Franklin,” 359. 

Black, Jeremiah S., Pa., 

“The Writ of Habeas Corpus,” 
313. 

“Roger Williams,” 406. 
Bolingbroke (Henry St. John), 
Eng., “Lawyers,” 173. 

Brady, James T., N. Y., 

“Public opinion v. prisoner,” 
55. 

“Grasped law and facts, dur¬ 
ing trial,” 50. 

Brewer, David J., Kans., “Con¬ 
stitution of U. S.,” 59. 

Brewster, Benj. H., Pa., “The 
Bar of Penna.,” 50. 

Brice, Calvin S., Ohio, “John 
McSweeney,” 739. 

Broadhead, Jas. O., Mo., “The 
Lawyer,” 20. 

Browne, Irving, N. Y., “D. D. 
Field, not a cheap lawyer,” 185. 


Burke, Edmund, Eng., 

“The Bible,” 211. 
“Jurisprudence,” 81. 

“R. B. Sheridan,” 639. 

Butler, Wm. Allen, N. Y., 
“Quacks in the Law,” 537. 
Buxton, Thos. Fowell, Eng., 
“Energy and Determination,” 
477. 

C ALL, William, N. Y., “Success 
at the Bar,” 258. 

Camden, Lord (Charles Pratt), 
Eng., “Fastened in the Stocks,” 
517. 

Campbell, John Lord, Eng., 
“The Jury System,” 341. 
“Lord Mansfield,” 221. 

“Lord John Somers,” 477. 
Carlyle, Thomas, Scotland, 
“Laughter,” 361. 

Carson, Hampton L., Pa., “Stan¬ 
ley Matthews,” 668. 

Carter, James C., N. Y., 

“Defeated D. D. Field’s Code,” 
81. 

“Charles O’Conor,” 321. 

“Some of his Great Cases,” 347. 
Castle, “House is Man’s,” 466. 
Chamberlain, Joseph, Eng., “Pa¬ 
triotism,” 320. 

Chatham, Lord (William Pitt, 
Sr.), Eng., “Religion,” 181. 
Chicago News, Ill., “Making it 
Legal,” 181. 

Choate, Rufus, Mass., 

“Proving a Negative,” 706. 
“Reading,” 188. 

“The Mind,” 188. 

Civilization, 454. 

Clarendon, Lord (Edward Hyde), 
Eng., “Law,” 172. 

Clark, Champ, Mo., “Aaron 
Burr,” 700. 

Clay, Henry, Ky., “The Compro¬ 
mise of 1850,” 331. 

Clemens, Sam’l L. (Mark Twain), 
Mo., “Advertising,” 229. 
Cleveland, Grover, N. Y., “Suc¬ 
cess at the Bar,” 256. 

Clinton, De Witt, N. Y., “Know¬ 
ledge,” 236. 

Coudert, Frederic C., N. Y., 
“Success at the Bar,” 400. 
Curran, Jno. P., Ire., “Tilt with 
Judge Robinson,” 714. 

Cutting, Jonas, Me., “Lawyers 
Created out of Nothing,” 216. 


XIV 


ADDITIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS—FILLERS 


D aniel, Jno. W., Va., “Negoti¬ 
able Paper,” 26. 
Demosthenes, “Laws,” 497. 
Denman, Thomas, Eng., “Saved 
O’Connell,” 93. 

Depew, Chauncey M., N. Y., 
“Benjamin Harrison,” 443. 
“Conkling,” 425. 

“Evarts and Choate,” 721, 
“Lincoln,” 445. 

“Roosevelt,” 449. 

“Talking to One’s Self,” 514. 
“Thomas Corwin,” 392. 
“Wendell Phillips’ Oratory,” 
481. 

“Woman,” 110. 

Dillon, Jno. F., N. Y., “James 
Kent,” 71. 

Dix, John A., N. Y., “The Old 
Flag,” 302. 

Dolliver, Jonathan P., la., “Robt. 
Emmet,” 344. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 111., “Main¬ 
taining the North,” 219. 

LDON, Lord (John Scott), Eng., 
“Handsome Lady,” 514. 
“Lending Books,” 469. 
“Motto: ‘Quick enough, if 
safe enough,’ ” 547. 

Emery, Nicholas, Me., “Law 
of Husband and Wife,” 205. 
Erskine, Thomas, Eng., 

“The Law,” 40. 

“Burke,” 537. 

Evarts, Wm. M., N. Y., 
“Contingent Fee,” 521. 
“Herbert Spencer,” 639. 
“Liberty Enlightening the 
World,” 732. 

F ellows, John R., N. Y., 
“Washington,” 495. 
Field, Stephen J., Calif., 
“Liability of Officer Exceeding 
Authority,” 23-4. 

Flanigan, John H., Mo., “Albert 
Cahn,” 658. 

Fortesque, John, Eng., “Every 
Man must have Defense,” 171. 
Fraud, What is? 524. 

Fullerton, William, N. Y., “Skil¬ 
ful Cross-Examiner,” 72. 

G ladstone, Wm. E., Eng., 
“The Age of Research,” 
279. 

“Censure,and Criticism,” 304. 
“Methods of Reading,” 364. 


Gooch, G. P., Eng., “Henry 
Adams,” 589. 

Graham, Da^dd, N. Y., “Cross- 
Examination,” 218. 

Greene, Frank L., Vt., “Past 
Acts,” 549. 

Greer, Robt. C., Pa., 

“Goodyear’s Rubber Patents,” 
761. 

“Our Prejudices,” 304. 
“Special Pleading,” 506. 
Griggs, John W., N. J., “The 
Ideal Lawyer,” 24. 

H ale, Sir Matthew, Eng., 
“The Law,” 173. 
Hallam, Henry, Eng., 
“Lawyer’s Style,” 81. 

Hamilton, Alex., N. Y., “Chief 
Justice Parsons,” 258. 

Harris, Prank, “Portrait of Carl¬ 
yle,” 383. 

Harris, Richard, Eng., “Practic¬ 
ing Law,” 197. 

Harrison, Benj., Ind., “Govern¬ 
ment’s Regulation of Wronged 
Foreigners,” 454. 

Hawkins, Henry (Lord Bramp¬ 
ton), Eng., “Not Guilty,” says 
jury, though you say you are, 

, 304. 

Heard, E. E.,“Lord Kenyon,” 423. 
Henry, Patrick, Va., “The Bible,” 
216. 

Herschell, Lord Parrer, Eng., 
“Britain’s Attitude towards U. 
S.,” 464. 

Hillard, Geo. S., Mass., “English 
Authors,” 449. 

Hobbes, Thomas, Eng., “What 
may be said of God,” 723. 
Hoffman, Qavid, ,N. Y., “Duty 
and Importance of the Law,” 
26. 

Hooker, Rev. Richard, Eng., 
“The Law,” 174. 

Howland, Henry C., N. Y., 
“Our Ancestors and Ourselves,” 
489. 

I ngalls, John J., Kans., “Advice 
to Young Lawyers,” 258. 
Ingersoll, Robt. G., Ill. 
“Music,” 492. 

J effeeson, Thomas, Va., “No 
Entangling Alliances with 
Europe,” 401. 

Jones, John P., Nev., “Debtors,” 
589. 



ADDITIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS—FILLERS 


XV 


K ent, James, N. Y., “The 
Bible,” 235. 

Knox, Philander C., Pa., 
“A vivid contrast,” 406. 

iBEL, in Runkle v. Meyer, 
3 Yates 551, Pa., 451. 
Lincoln, Abraham, Ill., “A 
Bad Law,” 217. 

Lockwood, Belva, Wash., D. C., 
“The Practice of Law,” 698. 

M arshall, Thos. F., “John 
Tyler,” 417. 

Mason, Jeremiah, N. H., 
“Getting in Evidence,” 699. 
“Opinion-Books,” 699. 
McCulloch, Hugh, Ind., “Web¬ 
ster’s Penetrating Look,” 763. 
McKelway, St. Clair, Mo., “Alark 
Twain,” 775. 

McKinley, William, Ohio, 

“Future of the Philippines,” 
250. 

“His First Case,” 228. 
“Plaintiff with Crooked Leg,” 
628. ' 

McSweeney, John, Ohio, “Sketch 
of,” 739. 

Alelish, Wm. B., Ohio., “The 
Ladies,” 493. 

Miller, Sam’l F., la., “Powers of 
Co-ordinate Branches of the 
Government,” 34. 

“Court Presumed to Know the 
Law,” 281. 

“Supreme Court of the United 
States,” 290. 

N eilsen, Joseph, N. Y., “The 
Growth of Principles,” 
18. 

Non-suit, 466. 

O ’Connell, Daniel, Ire., “In¬ 
cidents in his Life,” 650. 
Oglesby, Richard, III., “The 
Royal Corn,” 738. 

Olney, Richard, Mass., “Supreme 
Court, under Marshall,” 676. 

P ARSONS, Theophilus, Jr.,Mass., 
“Lemuel Shaw,” 761. 
Phelps, Edward J., Vt., 
“The U. S., Supreme Court,” 
195. 

Phillips, Charles, Ire., “Curran,” 
780. 

Pliillips, Wendell, Mass., “Anti- 
Slavery,” 197. 

“Law and Public Opinion,” 

no. 


Phillipson, Wm. M., “Richard 
Zouche,” 728. , 

Pinkney, William, Md., “The 
Nereide,” 44. 

uiNCY, Josiah, Mass., “The 

Bible,” 211. 

R andolph, John, Va., “Sketch 
of,” 634. 

Read, “Can read too much,” 
527. 

Reed, Thomas B., Me., “Ora¬ 
tory,” 765. 

Reeve, Henry, Eng., “Lord 
Brougham,” 409. 

Rhodes, Jas. Ford, Mass., 
“Funeral Oration of Pericles,” 
325. 

“Moral Revolutions,” 261. 
Ringrose, Hyacinthe, “Barristers 
and Solicitors,” 361. 

Root, Elihu, N. Y., “Experience 
with Greek Indians,” 352. 
Rose, U. M., Ark., “Old Age and 
the Law,” 628. 

S COTT, Sir Walter, Scotland, 
“Lawyer, when a me¬ 
chanic,” 81. 

Schouler,- James, Wash., D. C., 
“Toombs and Benjamin,” 261. 
Selden, John, Eng., “The Bible,” 
216. 

Semmes, Thos. J., La., “John 
Marshall,” 119. 

Stephens, Alexander H., Ga., 
“Toombs, Stephens and Peter,” 
350. 

Story, Joseph, Mass. 

“The Christian Religion,” 40. 
“The Uncertainty of the Law,” 
42. 

Sumner, Charles, Mass., “The 
True Granduer of Nations,” 39. 
Suretyships, 542. 

T hesiger, Sir Frederick (Lord 
Chelmsford), Eng., “You 
may deal; but I shall 
lead,” 458. 

Tracy, Uriah, Conn., “Mules 
going South to teach,” 477. 
Trollope, Anthony, Eng., “Books,' ’ 
382. 

V AN Buren, John, N. Y , 
“Reply when Interrupted, ’ 
723 

“Thought,” 284. 




XVI 


ADDITIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS—FILLERS 


Van Buren, Martin, N. Y., 
Sketch of, 728. 

Vinogradoff, Paul, Mass., “Legal 
Precedent,” 421. 

W alworth, Reuben H., N. Y., 
“Coal Dust Nuisance,” 
288. 

Waterson, Henry, Ky., “L. Q, 
C. Lamar,” 348. 

Wayne, Justice Jas. M., Ga., 
“Daniel Webster,” 411. 
Webster, Daniel, Mass., 
“California,” 634. 

“First Meeting with J. Mason.” 
386. 

“Gibbons v. Ogden,” 466. 
“Immortality,” 760. 

“Induced Appointment of 
Judge Shaw,” 295. 
“Jefferson,” 617. 

“Political Economy,” 696. 
“Religion,” 181. 

“Reply to Hayne,” 210.^ 
“Reply to Hayne,” (as written), 
351. 

“Story’s Offer to Help Webster 
in Hayne Speech,” 386. 

“The Bible,” 235. 


Webster, Noah, Conn., “Owner¬ 
ship of Real Estate,” 226. 
Wilmot, Chief Justice, Eng., 
“Validity of Gifts for Advance¬ 
ment of Learning,” 756. 
Wilson, James, Pa., “Greater as 
Lawyer than Judge,” 481. 
Winthrop, Robt. C., Mass., 
“John C. Calhoun,” 295. 
“Zachary Taylor,” 300. 

Wirt, William, Md., “Reading,” 
176. 

Woodbury, Levi, N. H., 
“Education,” 622. 

“People of New England,” 776. 
“Political Principles, Eternal,” 
527. 

“Traits of American Char¬ 
acter,” 621. 

Y elverton, Barry (Lord Avon- 
more), Ire., 

“Blackstone,” 314. 

“A Friend of Curran,” 314. 
“Defense of Grattan,” 307. 

Z ANE, John M., “Ignorance of- 
Jeremy Bentham,” 721. 


Great Sayings By Great Lawyers 


CHARLES ABBOT, lord tenterden (1762-1832), 

England 

Had an income, as a lawyer, of $40,000 a year; Chief Justice, 1818, 
held position nine years; wrote, when 40, “Merchants’ Ships and Seamen.” 

AN ATTORNEY NOT BOUND TO KNOW ALL LAW 

“No attorney is bound to know all the law. God forbid that it should 
be imagined that an attorney, or a counsel, or even a judge, is bound 
to know all the law.”— Montrou v. Jefferies, 10 M. and W., 158. 

HIS LAST WORDS 

“And, now gentlemen of the jury, you will consider of your verdict.” 

—Said while delirious. 

HIS YOUTHFUL AMBITION—TO BE A SINGER 

“Do you see that old man there amongst the choristers? In him, 
behold the only being I ever envied; when at school in this town, we were 
candidates together for a chorister’s place; he obtained it; and if I 
had gained my wish he might have been accompanying you as Chief 
Justice, and pointing me out as his old school-fellow, the singing-man.” 

—Said to Judge Richardson, when they attended services in the 
Cathedral of Canterbury. 

LORD CAMPBELL’S ESTIMATE OF LORD TENTERDEN 

“The impartial biographer cannot say that he was a great man, but 
he was certainly a great magistrate. To the duties of his judicial office 
he devoted all his energies, and on the successful performance of them 
he rested all his fame.”—4 Lives of the Chief Justices, 298 and 3^0. 

THE OBSCURITY OF HIS BIRTH ^ 

The obscurity of Abbot’s birth is well known, but he had too 
much sense to feel any false shame on that account. It is related i 
of him that when, in an early i ' ’ 4 his professional career, a brother j 
barrister with whom he happened to have a quarrel, had the bad taste 
to twit him of his origin, his manly and severe answer was, “Yes, sir, / 
I am the son of a barber. You would have been a barber yourself.” 

RHETORICAL DISPLAYS DISCOURAGED IN HIS COURT 

He would tolerate no fine displays in his court. 

“It is asserted in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” argued a pedantic barrister 
to his Lordship. 

“I don’t want to hear what is asserted in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” inter¬ 
posed the Chief Justice. 

“It is laid down in the ‘Pandects of Justinian-’ ” 

“Where have you got to now?” 

“It is a principle of the Civil Law-” 

“Oh, sir, we have nothing to do with civil law in this court.” 



2 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


JOHN MacDONNELL’S ESTIMATE OF LORD TENTERDEN 

“In no sense, was Lord Tenterden great. As a lawyer he was surpassed 
in acuteness and erudition by some judges of his own time. He was 
totally destitute of eloquence, and rather despised it, as an impediment 
to justice. He showed to disadvantage in an office which Mansfield had 
recently filled, and it was a grave defect in his conduct as Chief Justice 
that he granted the perilous remedy of criminal informations in circum¬ 
stances, in which Hale and Holt would have refused it. He had no 
pleasure in deducing from the common law paradoxes offensive to jus¬ 
tice. The court over which he presided was respected, and his deci¬ 
sions are still referred to with deference.” 

Lord Eldon wrote Lord Kenyon: “We endeavored the best we could. 
We could not do what would have been exceptionable. It was impos¬ 
sible.”—T/iw was said of Abbot as following Ellenborough. 

REBUKED JAMES SCARLETT 

When Sir James Scarlett in a speech before the jury, referred to the 
poetry of Southey and Wordsworth, as familiar to the twelve. Lord 
Tenterden observed, that “for himself he was bred in too severe a school 
to admire such effusions.” 

This was true, as during his busiest time, he used to refresh himself 
from the disgust of dry law, by reading a satire of Juvenal, or a chorus of 
Euripides. He likewise kept up a familiar knowledge of Shakespeare, 
Milton, Dryden and Pope, but was little acquainted with the modern 
school of English poets.— The Author. 

NOT A LITERARY MAN 

“Lord Tenterden, we are told, did not know the author of Hamlet.” 

—David Paul Brown, 1 '^The Forum,'’ 357. 

STUDIED BOTANY IN OLD AGE 

“Tenterden took up the study of Botany late in fife as a scientific 
pursuit, and wrote much poetry in Latin, in imitation of Horace and 
Ovid. Said when doing so: 

“You see I am now on my hobby, and you must be patient while I 
take a ride.” 

“Abbot was the son of a barber brought up in poverty; born 
Oct. 17, 1762, died in 1832. He yz ^ , Vii lad, and it is said his father 
used to express apprehensions lest he should be obliged to put the boy 
to another trade requiring less genius than that of a barber. He never 
rode a horse in his life, his father being too poor when he was a boy to 
own one, and when in his old age his physician recommended horse¬ 
back riding. Lord Tenterden was afraid to get onto a horse, for fear 
that he would fall off. He wrote early in his career a treatise on ‘Mer¬ 
chants, Ships and Seamen.’ It came out in 1802, and its success was 
complete, and it acquired fame in America. In the year 1807, when 45 
years of age, his income is known to have been large, as he returned for 
the income tax an income of $40,130 a year. And Erskine in all his 
glory never reached $50,000 a year. Afterwards he is supposed to have 
exceeded this; became Chief Justice in 1818, upon the death of Lord 
Ellenborough, and held the office fourteen years, until his death.” 

— 4- Campbell’s Lives of the Chief Justices, 262. 


LORD ABINGER (See James Scarlett) 


JOHN ADAMS (1735-1826), Massachusetts 

PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 

“Tell not of your prosperity, becsB^ise it will make two men mad to 
one glad; nor of your adversity, for it will make two men glad to one 
mad.”—John Adams, in letter to his wife of his boasting friend Smith, 
written from Philadelphia, 1773. 

THEODORE PARKER’S OPINION OF ADAMS 

“Mr. Adams had a great mind, quick, comprehensive, analytical, not 
easily satisfied save with ultimate causes, tenacious also of its treasures. 
His memory did not fail until he was old. With the exception of Dr. 
Franklin, I think of no American politician in the 18th century that was 
his intellectual superior. For though Hamilton and Jefferson, nay 
Jay and Madison and Marshall surpassed him in some high qualities, 
yet no one of them seems to have been quite his equal in all the three 
departments of the intellect, the Understanding, the great practical 
power; the Imagination, the poetic power; and the Reason, the philosoph¬ 
ical power. * * * At the age of forty years, he was the ablest 

lawyer in New England (this was in 1775), perhaps, the ablest lawyer 
in America. He was the most learned in historical legal lore, the most 
profound in the study of first principles.”— Theo. Parker's 'Historical 
Americans,' 1870. 

GEORGE BANCROFT’S ESTIMATE OF ADAMS 

“Looking into himself, he saw weaknesses, but neither meanness nor 
dishonesty nor timidity. Overweening self-esteem was his chief blemish. 
Having more learning than Washington, better knowledge of freedom as 
grounded in law than Samuel Adams, clearer insight into the constructive 
elements of government than Franklin, more readiness in debate than 
Jefferson, he could easily fancy himself the center of a circle to which he 
had been no more than a tangent; and in age vanity sometimes bewildered 
his memory; but it did not impair the integrity of his conduct. He was 
humane and frank, generous and clement; if he could never sit placidly 
under the shade of a greater reputation than his own, his envy had hardly 
a tinge of malignity. He went to his ^sk, sturdy and cheery and brave; 
he was the hammer and not the anvil, and it was for others to shrink 
from his blows. His courage was unflinching in debate, and everywhere 
else; he never knew what fear was. To his latest old age he saw ten times 
as much pleasure as pain in the world, and was ready to begin life anew 
and fight its battle over again.”— Bancroft's Hist. U. S., 332. 

“An efficient preparation for war can alone secure peace.” 

—In his Message of 1798. 

“Whenever vanity and gaiety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, 
equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant 
entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men 
and women, there is. no knowing where they will stop, nor into what 
evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.” 

“Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish 
to keep them in working order.” 



4 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“The education of our children is never out of my mind. Train them 
in virtue, habituate them in industry, activity and spirit, rnake them con¬ 
sider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to 
be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful knowledge.” 
—From letter to his wife. 

“I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. 
Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, was my 
unalterable determination.” 

— Adams' WorJcs^ Vol. Jj., p% 8—to Jonathan Sewall. 

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in 
the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated 
by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought 
to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devo¬ 
tion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, 
with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, illuminations, from one end 
of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.” 

—Letter to wife, July 3, 1776. 

GREATNESS OF ENGLAND 

“England is now the greatest nation upon the globe. A few people 
came over into the new world for conscience sake. Perhaps this appar¬ 
ently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. 
It looks likely to me; for if we can remove the turbulent Gallicks {i. e., 
drive away the troublesome Frenc/i), our people, according to the exactest 
computations, will in another century become more numerous than 
England itself. {It did slightly exceed that of the British Isles in a 
century). Should this be the case, since we have, I may say, all the 
naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the 
mastery of the seas; and then the united forces of all Europe will not be 
able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves 
is to disunite us. Divide et Impera. Keep us distinct colonies; and 
then some great men in each colony, desiring the monarchy (in the 
Greek sense of sole control) of the whole, they will destroy each other’s 
infiuence, and keep the country in equilihrio." 

— Written by Adams, then twenty, shortly after graduation, and 
20 years before the Revolution, in 1775. {1735-1826). 

THOROUGH STUDENT OF LAW 

“No other in America had studied the science of government and the 
various forms for reaching political ends so much and so thoroughly 
as John Adams had done: and the practical tendency of his mind made 
his advice valuable. Jefferson and Samuel Adams were theoretical, and 
full of that false republican fear of reposing real governing power any¬ 
where, lest it should be abused: a jealous fear which leads, if it works to 
its natural results, to an anarchy that invites despotism. It has been the 
good fortune of America to be neither Hamiltonian nor Jeffersonian. 
When Jefferson said that the tree^ of liberty needs frequently to be 
watered with blood, and that rebellion is a good thing and necessary in 
the poHtical world, he showed that he lacked the constructive power to 
conceive a government which should be at once firm enough for civil 
order and elastic and changeable enough for liberty. Hamilton’s schemes 
missed the same good qualities in an opposite way. Practical people 
have found ways between the two; and John Adams, misunderstood and 
called an aristocrat, was of this practical sort. Both Jefferson and Adams 
were aristocrats to this degree, that they believed the wisest and best 
should be chosen to lead, to plan, to judge, to execute.”— Samuel Willard, 
in his ^Life of John Adams,' 1898, p. 56. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


5 


DUTY TO DEFEND CRIMINAL 

“If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessing and 
tears of transport shall be a sufficient consolation for me for the contempt 
of all mankind.” 

—Said hy Adams, when ashed why he defended the eight British 
soldiers for murder, in the Boston Massacre. {Willard's Life, 133). 

RULES WHICH MADE ADAMS A GREAT LAWYER AND 
STATESMAN 

“Ride and mount your horse by the morning’s dawn, and shake away 
amidst the great and beautiful scenes of nature that appear at that time 
of day, all the crudities that are left in the stomach, and all the obstruc¬ 
tions that are left in your brains. Then return to your studies, and bend 
your whole soul to the institutes of the law and the reports of cases that 
have been adjusted by the rules of the institutes. Let no trifling diversion 
or amusement of company decoy you from your books: no girl, no gun, 
no cards, no flutes, no violins, no dress, no tobacco, no laziness.” 

DEFENSE OF THE BOSTON TORIES 

“The next morning, I think it was, sitting in my office, near the steps 
of^ the town-house stairs, Mr. Forest came in, who was then called the 
Irish Infant. With tears streaming down from his eyes, he said, T am 
come with a very solemn message from a very unfortunate man. Captain 
Preston, in prison. He wishes for counsel, and can get none. I have 
waited on Mr. Quincy, who says he will engage, if you will give him your 
assistance; without it he positively will not. Even Mr. Auchmuty 
declines, unless you will engage.’ I had no hesitation in answering, that 
counsel ought to be the very last thing that an accused person should 
want in a free country; that the Bar ought, in my opinion, to be independ¬ 
ent and impartial, at all times and in every circumstance, and that persons 
whose lives were at stake ought to have counsel they preferred. But he 
must be sensible, this would be as important a cause as was ever tried in 
any country of the world; and that every lawyer must hold himself 
responsible not only to his country, but to the highest and most infallible 
of all tribunals, for the part he should act. He must, therefore, expect 
from me no art or address, no sophistry or prevarication, in such a cause, 
nor anything more than fact, evidence, and law would justify. ‘Captain 
Preston,’ he said, ‘requested and desired more; and that he has such an 
opinion from all he had heard from all parties of me, that he would 
cheerfully trust his life with me upon those principles.’ ‘And,’ said 
Forest, ‘as God Almighty is my judge, I believe him an innocent man.’ 
I replied, that must be ascertained by his trial, and if he thinks he cannot 
have a fair trial of that issue without my assistance, without hesitation 
he shall have it. * * * “At this time, I had more business at the bar 

than any man in the Province. My health was feeble. I was throwing 
away as bright prospects as any man ever had before him, and I had 
devoted myself to endless labor and anxiety, if not to infamy and to 
death, and that for nothing, except what indeed was and ought to be in 
all, a sense of duty. In the evening I expressed to Mrs. Adams all my 
apprehensions. That excellent lady, who has always encouraged me, 
burst into a flood of tears, but said she was very sensible of all the danger 
to her and to our children, as well as to me, but she thought I had done 
as I ought; she was very willing to share in all that was to come, and to 
place her trust in Providence.”— 2 John Adams' Works, 230-36. 

Of this trial Bancroft says: “The defense was left to John Adams 
and Quincy, and was conducted with consummate ability. As the 


6 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


firing upon the citizens took place at night, it was not difficult to raise 
a doubt whether Preston or some other person had cried to the soldiers 
to fire; and on that doubt a verdict of acquittal was obtained. * * * 

The trial of the eight soldiers who were with Preston followed a few 
weeks later. Two of them were proved to have fired, and were found 
guilty of manslaughter. As seven guns only were fired, the jury acquitted 
the other six; choosing that five guilty should escape rather than one 
innocent be convicted.”— 3 Bancroft's Hist. U. S., 390-1. 

COURSE OF LAW STUDY 

“I have read a multitude of books, mastered but few. Wood, Coke, 
two volumes of Lillies’ Abridgment, two volumes Salkeld’s Reports, 
Swinburne, Hawkins’ Pleas of the Crown, Fortesque, Fitzgibon. Ten 
volumes in folio, I read at Worcester quite through, besides octavos and 
lesser volumes, and many others, of all sizes, that I consulted occasionally 
without reading in course, as dictionaries, reporters, entries and abridg¬ 
ments. During the last two years, Justinian’s Institutes, I have read 
through in Latin, with Vinnius’ Perpetual Notes, Van Muyden’s Tracat- 
ic Institutionum Justiniani. Wood’s Institutes of the Civil Law I 
read through. These on the Civil Law. On the law of England, I read 
Cowell’s Institute of the Laws of England, and Imitations of Justinian, 
Doctor and Student, Finch’s Discourse of Law, Hale’s History, and some 
reporters’ Cases in Chancery, Andrews, etc., besides occasional searches 
for business; also a General Treatise of Naval Trade and Commerce, 
as founded on law and statutes. All this series of reading has left but 
faint impressions and a very imperfect system of law in my head. I 
must form a very serious resolution of beginning and pursuing quite 
through the plans of Lords Hale and Reeves. Wood’s Institutes of 
Common Law, I never read but once, and my Lord Coke’s Commentaries 
on Littleton, I never read but once. These two authors I must get and 
read over and over again.” 

— Adams, in letter of Nov., 1760, when 2,5 years old. Charles 
Warren’s History of the American Bar, 171. 

REASON, JUSTICE AND EQUITY 

“Reason, justice and equity never had weight enough on the face of 
the earth to govern the councils of man. It is interest alone which 
does it, and it is interest alone which can be trusted; that, therefore, the 
interests within doors, should be the mathematical representatives of 
the interests without doors: that the individuality of a colony increase 
its wealth or numbers. If it does pay equally. If it does not add weight 
in the scale of the confederacy, it cannot add to their rights, nor weight 
in argument.” 

—Said by Adams in the Convention which adopted the Declaration 
of Independence, Aug., 1775. 

ADVICE WHEN A LAW STUDENT TO HIMSELF 

“Labor to get distinct ideas of law, right, wrong, justice, equity; 
search for them in ypur own mind, in Roman, Grecian, French, English 
treaties of natural, civil, common, statute law. Aim at an exact know¬ 
ledge of the nature, end and means of government. Compare the different 
forms of it with each other, and each of them with their effects on public 
and private happiness. Study Seneca, Cicero, and all other good moral 
writers; study Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, Vinnius, etc., and all other 
good civil writers.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


7 


JAMES OTIS 

In a sketch of James Otis, perhaps the greatest American lawyer in 
the years immediately preceding the Revolution, President Adams in 
his old age reiterates these thoughts. Otis he wrote, was: 

“A great master of the laws of nature and nations. He had read 
Puffendorf, Grotius, Burlamqui, Vattel, Heineccius; and in the civil 
law, Domat, Justinian, and, upon occasions, consulted the Corpus 
Juris at Large. It was a maxim that he inculcated in his pupils, as his 
patron in the profession, Mr. Gridley, had done before him, ‘that a lawyer 
ought never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral 
philosophy on his table or in his pocket.’ ”— 1 John Adams' Life and 
Works, 46; also Niles Register, Vol. 1 (N. S.), 361. 

ADVICE TO HIS SON, THOMAS, JUST ADMITTED 

“I always rejoice to hear of your arguing cases. This arguing is the 
way to business. Argue, Argue, Argue, forever when you can, and never 
be concerned about the issue, any further than you ought to interest 
yourself for truth and justice. If you speak in public tho you lose your 
cause, it will serve your reputation, if you speak well, as much as if you 
gained it. Hard study and close application to business will infallibly 
increase your business till it is commensurate with your necessities and 
affords you a surplus. Science and literature will assist your reputation 
as much as law.”— Mass. Historical Proceedings, Vol. 49, 466. 

FISHER AMES 

(Upon the death of Fisher Ames, a noted Federalist, one of the greatest 
orators America has produced, Adams said): 

“I have lost the ablest friend I had on earth.” 

FRANKLIN ON ADAMS 

“Adams was always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes 
wholly out of his senses.”— 1 Schoulder's U. S. Hist., 497. 

EXCERPTS FROM DEFENSE OF CAPTAIN PRESTON 

“If Heaven, in its anger, shall ever permit the time to come when, 
by means of an abandoned administration at home, and the outrages 
of the soldiery here, the bond of parental affection and filial duty between 
Britain and the colonies shall be dissolved, when we shall be shaken loose 
from the shackles of the common law and our allegiance, and reduced 
to a state of nature, the American and British soldier must fight it out 
upon the principles of the law of nature and of nations. But it is certain 
such a time is not yet arrived, and every virtuous Briton and American 
prays it never may. Till then, however, we must try causes in the 
tribunals of justice, by the law of the land.” * * * Again:— 

“Pacts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our 
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state 
of facts and evidence. Nor is the law less stable than the fact. If an 
assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear; they had a right 
to kill in their own defense. If it was not so severe as to endanger their 
lives, yet if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of 
any sort, by snowballs, oyster-shells, cinders, clubs or sticks of any 
kind, this was a provocation, for which the law reduces the offense of 
killing down to manslaughter, in consideration of those passions in our 
nature which cannot be eradicated.” * * * Again:— 


8 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“To use the words of a great and worthy man, a patriot and a hero, 
an enlightened friend of mankind, and a martyr to liberty, I mean Algernon 
Sydney, who, from his earliest infancy, sought a tranquil retirement 
under the shadow of the tree of liberty with his tongue, his pen and his 
sword:” 

“ ‘The law no passion can disturb. ’Tis void of desire and fear, 
lust and anger. ’Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some 
measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases 
a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commends that 
which is good, and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low. 
’Tis deaf, inexorable, inflexible. On the one hand, it is inexorable to 
the cries and lamentations of the prisoner; on the other, it is deaf, deaf 
as an adder, to the clamors of the populace.’ ” 

(Mr. Adams said years afterward, of his defense of Capt. Preston): 
“The part I took in defense of Captain Preston and the soldiers procured 
me anxiety and obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most 
gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, 
and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country. Judg¬ 
ment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain 
upon this country as the executions of the Quakers or witches recently. 
As the evidence was, the verdict of the jury was exactly right.” 

—2 Adams’ Works, 317. 

JOHN ADAMS ON FRANKLIN 

“Franklin’s reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz 
or Newton, Frederick the Great or Voltaire, and his character more 
beloved and esteemed than all of them. * * * If a collection could 

be made of all the gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the 18 th 
century, a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon le grand 
Franklin would appear, than upon any other man that ever lived.” 

—John Adams’ Works, Vol. 1, p. 660-1. 

ADAMS ON THE GREAT OF BRITAIN AND FRANCE 

“Four of the flnest writers that Great Britain ever produced were 
Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hume and Gibbon, whose labors were translat¬ 
ed into all languages, and three of the most eloquent writers that ever 
lived in France whose works were also translated into all languages, 
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Raynal, seem to have made it the study of 
their lives and the object of their most strenuous exertions, to render 
mankind in Europe discontented with their situation in life, and with 
the state of society, both in religion and government.” 

—1 Adams’ Works, 660. 

“While Franklin had the singular felicity to enjoy the entire esteem 
and affection of all the philosophers of every denomination, he was not 
less regarded by all the sects of Christians. The Catholics thought him 
almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. 
The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian and the Friends 
believed him a wet QuaW. * * * Indeed all sects considered him, 

and I believe justly, a friend to unlimited toleration in matters of religion.” 

— Adams’ Works, 661. 


JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (1767-1848), Massachusetts 


ON MANSFIELD 

“Of the character of Lord Mansfield as a statesman, lawyer and moral¬ 
ist, I have a very different opinion (than the praise of him by Judge 
Story, in a letter to Adams). As a statesman, his genius cowered before 
that of Chatham, as a lawyer before that of Camden, and as a moralist 
his countenance of English smugglers against foreign laws has been 
justly censured by the Jurists of Continental Europe. I speak of prom¬ 
inent incidents in his life and even without reference to his bitter and 
rancorous hatred of our country, and opposition to her cause. He was 
a Scottish Jacobite, metamorphosed by the course of events into a syco¬ 
phant of the House of Hanover, but in changing his bottom, he carried 
his principles with him, from the sinking of the fioating ship. These 
principles he had learned in the Roman Law, which was the law of Scotland; 
a law of wisdom, but of servitude; the law of a great commercial empire, 
digested in the days of Justinian and containing all the principles of 
justice and equity suited to the relations of men in society with each 
other; but by a law under the head of government, was ^Imperator 
Augustus, legibus solutus.' To this system Lord Mansfield added the 
Marine Ordinance of Louis XIV, and from these radical sources engrafted 
his body of Commercial Jurisprudence upon his stock of the Common 
Law of England, a law .almost entirely agricultural; more than sufficiently 
poisoned by the feudality of the Norman Conquest, but still illuminated 
with principles favorable to personal liberty, at least with Jury Trial 
and the Habeas Corpus. These were unknown to the Roman Law, 
and if Lord Mansfield did not expunge them from the law of England, it 
was not for want of his exertion so to do. His principles in our controversy 
with Great Britain, fiowed naturally from his fountain of Roman Law, 
which knew as little of the link between taxation and representation 
as of Habeas Corpus and Jury Trial.”— J. Q. Adams, letter to Judge Jos 
Story, Quincy, Mass., Nov. J, 1829. 


A RETROSPECT 

“An age of sorrow and a life of storms. As I look back over my exis¬ 
tence I see a pathway of mingled roses and thorns; but the roses have 
long since disappeared, and the thorns only remain.”— J. Q. Adams. 

The above was said by J. Q. Adams, who had everything that almost 
every human of our generation fancies worth having, and is striving 
distractedly to get, health, strength, grace, eloquence, culture and 
popularity.— The Author. 


THE WANTS OF MAN 

“ ‘Man wants but little here below. 
Nor wants that little long.’ 

‘Tis not with me exactly so; 

But, ’tis so in the song. 

My wants are many and, if told. 
Would muster many a score; 

And were each wish a mint of gold, 
I still should long for more. 


10 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


What first I want is daily bread—• 

And canvas backs and wine— 

And all the realms of nature spread 
Before me, when I dine. 

Four courses scarcely can provide 
My appetite to quell; 

With four choice cooks from France beside, 
To dress my dinner well. 

What next I want, at princely cost. 

Is elegant attire: 

Black sable furs for winter’s frost. 

And silks for summer’s fire. 

And Cashmere shawls, and Brussels lace 
My bosom’s front to deck,— 

And diamond rings my hands to grace. 

And rubies for my neck. 

I want (who does not want?) a wife,— 
Affectionate and fair; 

To solace all the woes of life. 

And all its joys to share. 

Of temper sweet, of yielding will. 

Of firm, yet placid mind,— 

With all my faults to love me still 
With sentiment refined. 

And as Time’s car incessant runs. 

And Fortune fills my store, 

I want of daughters and of sons. 

From eight to half a score. 

I want (alas! can mortal dare 
Such bliss on earth to crave?) 

That all the girls be chaste and fair— 

The boys all wise and brave. 

I want a warm and faithful friend. 

To cheer the adverse hour; 

Who ne’er to flatter will descend. 

Nor bend the knee to power— 

A friend to chide when I’m wrong. 

My inmost soul to see; 

And that my friendship prove as strong 
For him as his for me. 

I want the seals of power and place. 

The ensigns of command; 

Charged by the people’s unsought grace 
To rule my native land. 

Nor crown or sceptre would I ask 
But from my country’s will. 

By day, by night, to ply the task 
Her cup.of bliss to fill. 

I want the voice of honest praise 
To follow me behind. 

And to be thought in future days 
The friend of human-kind. 

That after ages, as they rise, 

Exulting may proclaim 
In choral union to the skies 
Their blessings on my name. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


11 


These are the Wants of mortal Man — 

I cannot want them long, 

For life itself is but a span, 

And earthly bliss—a song. 

My last great Want —absorbing all— 

Is, when beneath the sod. 

And summoned to my final call. 

The Mercy of my Godf' 

— Washington, D. C., Aug, 31, 18^1. 

These nine verses are said to have been written in as many young 
girl’s albums, by Adams, when 74 years old, and serving in the House 
of Representatives.— The Author. 

“This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe. 

For Freedom only deals the deadly blow; 

Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade. 

For gentle peace in Freedom’s hallowed shade.” 

— Written in an album in 1842. 

TILT WITH STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 

Mr. Adams: “I never said that our title was good to the Rio del 
Norte, from the mouth to its source.” 

Mr. Douglas: “I know nothing of the gentleman’s mental reserva¬ 
tions. If he means, by his denial, to place the whole emphasis on the 
qualifications that he did not claim that river as the boundary 'from its 
mouth to its source,' I shall not dispute with him on that point. But if 
he wishes to be understood as denying that he ever claimed the Rio 
del Norte, in general terms, as our boundary under the Louisiana treaty, 
I can furnish him with an official document, over his own signature, 
which he will find very difficult to explain. I allude to his famous dis¬ 
patch as Secretary of State in 1819, to Don Onis, the Spanish minister. 
I am not certain that I can prove his handwriting, for the copy I have 
in my possession I find printed in the American State Papers, published 
by order of Congress. In that paper he not only claimed the Rio del 
Norte as our boundary, but he demonstrated the validity of the claim 
by a train of facts and arguments which rivet conviction on every im¬ 
partial mind, and defy refutation.” 

Mr. Adams: “I wrote that dispatch as Secretary of State, and en¬ 
deavored to make out the best case I could for my own country, as it was 
my duty; but I utterly deny that I claimed the Rio del Norte as our 
boundary in its full extent. I only claimed it a short distance up the river, 
and then diverged northward some distance from the stream.” 

Mr. Douglas: “Will the gentleman specify the point at which his 
line left the river?” 

Mr. Adams: “I never designated the point.” 

Mr. Douglas: “Was it above Matamoras?” 

Mr. Adams: “I never specified any particular place.” 

Mr. Douglas: “I am well aware that the gentleman never specified 
any point of departure for the northward line, which, he now informs 
us, was to run a part of the way on the east side of that river; for he 
claimed the river as the boundary in general terms, without any qualifica¬ 
tion. But his present admission is sufficient for my purposes, if he will 
only specify the point from which he then understood or now under¬ 
stands that the line was to have diverged from the river. I have heard of 
this line before, and know with reasonable certainty its point of departure. 
It followed the river to a place near the highlands, certainly more than 
100 miles above Matamoras; consequently, if we adopt that line as our 
present boundary, it will give up Point Isabel and General Taylor’s 
camp opposite Matamoras, and every inch of ground upon which an 


12 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


American soldier has ever placed his foot since the annexation of Texas 
to the Union. Hence my solicitude to extract an answer fpm the ven¬ 
erable gentlemen (then 72, two years before his death) to my interrogatory 
whether his line followed the river any distance above Matamoras, and 
hence, I apprehend, the cause of my failure to procure a response to that 
question. If he had responded to my inquiry, his answer would have 
furnished a triumphant refutation to all the charges which he and his 
friends have made against the President for ordering the army of occupa¬ 
tion to its present position. I am not to be diverted from the real point 
in controversy by a discussion of the question whether the Rio del Norte 
was the boundary to its source. My present object is to repel the calumnies 
which have been urged against our government, to place our country 
in the right and the enemy in the wrong, according to the truth and justice 
of the case. I have exposed these calumnies by reference to the acts 
and admissions of our accusers, by which they have asserted our title 
to the full extent that we have taken possession. I have shown that 
Texas always claimed the Rio del Norte as her boundary during the 
existence of the republic, and that Mexico on several occasions recognized 
it as such in the most direct and solemn manner. The President ordered 
the army no farther than Congress had extended our laws. In view of 
these facts, I leave it to the candor of every honest man whether the 
executive did not do his duty, and nothing but his duty, when he ordered 
the army to the Rio del Norte. Should he have folded his arms, and 
allowed our citizens to be murdered and our territory to be invaded 
with impunity? Have we not forborne to act, either offensively or 
defensively, until our forbearance is construed into cowardice, and is 
exciting contempt from those toward whom we have exercised our 
magnanimity? We have a long list of grievances, a long catalogue of 
wrongs to be avenged. The war has commenced; blood has been shed; 
our territory invaded; all by the act of the enemy.” 

—Stephen A. Douglas, from debate in House of Representatives, 

May, 18^6, on the Mexican War. 

RUFUS CHOATE’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“John Quincy Adams had an instinct for the jugular and the carotid 
artery, as unerring as that of any carnivorous animal.” 

ADAMS’ VERSATILITY 

“No other American President, not even Thomas Jefferson, has equaled 
John Quincy Adams in literary accomplishments. His orations and 
public speeches wiU be found to stand for a tradition of painstaking, 
scholastic finish hardly to be found elsewhere in American orations, 
and certainly not among the speeches of any other President. As a 
result of the pains he took with them, they belong rather to literature 
than to politics, and it is possible that they Avill not be generally appreci¬ 
ated at their real worth for several generations still to come. If, as is 
sometimes alleged in such eases, they gain in literary finish at the expense 
of force, it is not to be forgotten that the forcible speech which, ignoring 
all rules, carries its point by assault, may buy immediate effect at the 
expense of permanent respectability. And if John Quincy Adams, 
who labored as Cicero did to give his addresses' the greatest possible 
literary finish, does not rank with Cicero among orators, it is certain 
that respectalDility will always be willingly conceded him by every 
generation of his countrymen. At eighteen years of age, he was well 
posted in Roman and English history; had translated Virgil’s ^neid 
Suetonius, the whole of Sallust, Tacitus, Agricola, his Germany and 
several books of his Annals, a great part of Horace, some of Ovid, and 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


13 


some of Caesar’s Commentaries, besides a number of Tully’s orations. 
In Greek his progress has not been equal, yet he studied morsels of 
Artistotle’s Poetics, in Plutarch’s Lives, and Lucian’s Dialogues, the 
Choice of Hercules, in Xenophon, and went through several books of 
Homer’s Iliad.”— 1 Brewer's The Worlds Best Orations, 6^. 

STATE SOVEREIGNTY—WON’T DO 

“The Revolution itself was the work of thirteen years—and had 
never been completed until that day, the 30th day of April, 1789. The 
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, 
are parts of one consistent whole, founded upon one and the same theory of 
government, then new in practice, though not as a theory, for it had been 
working itself into the mind of man for many ages, and had been especially 
expounded in the writings of Locke, but had never before been adopted 
by a great nation in practice.” 

“There are yet, even at this day, many speculative objections to this 
theory. Even in our own country, there are still philosophers who 
deny the principles asserted in the Declaration, as self-evident truths— 
who deny the natural equality and inalienable rights of man—who 
deny that the people are the only legitimate source of power—who 
deny that all just powers of government are derived from the consent 
of the governed. Neither your time, nor perhaps the cheerful nature 
of this occasion, permit me here to enter upon the examination of this 
anti-revolutionary theory, which arrays State sovereignty against the 
constituent sovereignty of the people, and distorts the Constitution 
of the United States into a league of friendship between confederate 
corporations. I speak to matters of fact. There is the Declaration of 
Independence, and there is the Constitution of the United States—^let 
them speak for themselves. The grossly immoral and dishonest doctrine 
of despotic State sovereignty, the exclusive judge of its own obligations, 
and responsible to no power on earth or in heaven, for the violation of 
them, is not there. The Declaration says, it is not in me. The Consti¬ 
tution says, it is not in me.”— Jubilee of the Constitution, before the N. Y. 

Historical Society, Ayr. 30, 1839. 

THE PILGRIMS, A PROPHECY 

“In thus calling your attention to some of the peculiar features in the 
principles, the character, and the history of our forefathers, it is as wide 
from my design, as I know it would be from your approbation, to adorn 
their memory with a chaplet plucked from the domain of others. The occa¬ 
sion and the day are more peculiarly devoted to them, and let it never be 
dishonored with a contracted and exclusive spirit. Our affections as 
citizens embrace the whole extent of the Union, and the names of Raleigh, 
Smith, Winthrop, Calvert, Penn, Oglethorpe, excite in our minds recol¬ 
lections equally pleasing and gratitude equally fervent with those of 
Carver and Bradford. Two centuries have not yet elapsed since the 
first European foot touched the soil which now constitutes the American 
Union. Two centuries more and our numbers must exceed those of 
Europe itself. The destinies of this empire, as they appear in prospect 
before us, disdain the powers of human calculation. Yet, as the original 
founder of the Roman state is said once to have lifted upon his shoulders 
the fame and fortunes of all his posterity, so let us never forget that the 
glory and greatness of all our descendants is in our hands. Preserve in 
all their purity, refine, if possible, from all their alloy, those virtues 
which we this day commemorate as the ornament of our forefathers. 
Adhere to them with infallible resolution, as to the horns of the altar; 
instill them with unwearied perseverance into the minds of your children; 
bind your souls and theirs to the national Union as the chords of hfe 


14 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


are centered in the heart, and you shall soar with rapid and steady 
wing to the summit of human glory. Nearly a century ago, one of those 
rare minds to whom it is given to discern future greatness in its seminal 
principles upon contemplating the situation of this continent, pro¬ 
nounced, in a vein of poetic inspiration, ‘Westward the star of empire 
takes its way.’ Let us unite in ardent supplication to the Pounder of 
nations and the Builder of worlds, that what then was prophecy may 
continue unfolding into history, that the dearest hopes of the human 
race may not be extinguished in disappointment, and that the last may 
prove the noblest empire of time.” 

—From Oration at Plymouth, Dec. 22, 1802. 

LAFAYETTE 

“Lafayette discovered no new principle of polities or of morals. He 
invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the 
laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, 
under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent 
fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at the moment 
of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social 
equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from 
above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, 
his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. 
He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the 
most effective champions of our independence; but, that once achieved, 
he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the 
controversies which have divided us. In the events of our revolution, 
and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment 
and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafeyette found the most perfect 
form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly 
have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary republic of 
Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas Moore, he took a practical existing 
model, in actual operation here, and never attempted or wished more 
than to apply it faithfully to his own country. * * * 

“When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in 
all the institutions of Prance; when government shall no longer be con¬ 
sidered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust committed 
for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it came; 
as a burdensome duty to be discharged, and not as a reward to be abused; 
when a claim, any claim, to political power by inheritance shall, in the 
estimation of the whole French people, be held as it now is by the whole 
people of the North American Union—then will be the time for con¬ 
templating the character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his 
life, but in the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his 
fervent aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his long and 
eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward, till the hour when the 
trumpet of the Archangel shall sound to announce that Time shall be no 
more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our 
race, high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of man¬ 
kind.”— Eulogy on Lafayette, delivered in Congress, Dec. 31, 1831/.. 

THOMAS F. MARSHALL’S EXPERIENCE WITH ADAMS 

“A few days after the unsuccessful effort was made in Congress in 
1842, to pass a resolution of censure against Adams, for presenting a 
petition from citizens of Massachusetts for the dissolution of the Union, 
in which effort Marshall took a leading part, I happened to be seated 
with some Southern members of Congress at the dinner table in a Wash¬ 
ington hotel, when Marshall came in. It seemed that Mr. Adams had 
said, or done something, that day which had irritated these gentlemen. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


15 


and as Mr. Marshall was taking his seat at the table, one of them ex¬ 
claimed, ‘Well, Marshall, the old devil has been at work again, you must 
take him in hand.’ ‘Not I,’ replied Marshall, with a decisive shake 

of the head; ‘I have been gored by that d-d old bull, and have had 

enough of him. If there be any more of this kind of work, it must be 
undertaken by somebody else. The old devil, as you call him, is a match 
for a score of such fellows as you and me.’ ”— McCulloch's 'Men and 
Measures of Half Century.' 38. 

ADAMS ON COKE’S LITTLETON 

“March, 1788. I this day got through my folio of Lord Coke, which 
has been hanging upon me these ten weeks. It cohtains a vast mass 
of law learning, but heaped up in such an incoherent mass that I have 
derived very little benefit from it, indeed, I think it a very improper 
book to put into the hands of a student just entering upon the acquisition 
of the profession. * * * TJie addition of Wood’s Institutes, and more 

especially of Blackstone’s Commentaries has been an inestimable ad¬ 
vantage to the late students in the profession.” 

—{This was when Adams was in Theophilus Parson's office),Adams' 
Diary: ‘Warren's Hist. Am. Bar,' 177. 

CONDUCTED THREE NOTED CASES 

Adams appeared in 1804-5, in Head v. Providence Ins. Co., 2 Cranch, 
127 (U. S. Supreme Court); and in 1809, in Hope Ins. Co. v. Boardman, 
5 Cranch (U. S. Supreme Court); and 36 years later, when 74 years of 
age, in United States v. Amistad, 15 Peters, 518 (U. S. Supreme Court). 
The last case involved the freedom of certain negroes, who while brought 
to this country illegally by slave traders, had gained mastery of the 
vessel and murdered the officers. Having been taken together with the 
vessel into an U. S. port, by an U. S. vessel, they were claimed as slaves 
by their alleged Spanish owners. This was in 1841. Judge Story wrote 
of his argument: 

“The old man was full of his accustomed virility and belligerency, and 
spoke for four hours and twenty minutes. It was extraordinary for its 
power, for its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond 
the record and points of discussion.” 

— Story, in letter to his wife, Feb. 28, 18^1. See also, Warren's 
‘Hist. Am. Bar,' 270 and 1^29-30. 

THE CONSTITUTION OP U. S. 

“The Constitution was extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluct¬ 
ant nation.”— From a lecture on ‘ The Power of Ideals,' J. 

CLAIMED SLAVERY COULD BE ABOLISHED UNDER FEDERAL 

WAR POWERS 

In one of his speeches, in 1836, Adams claimed slavery could be abolish¬ 
ed by the exercise of the war powers of the Federal Government. He 
was not technically an Abolitionist, however. 

SCHOULER’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“There was something rasping and jarring in Adams’ delivery, and when 
the old man undertook to make himself heard, as he sometimes did, 
above the din and confusion, he helped most to create, his voice though 


16 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


apt to break, would pierce the remotest corner of the ill-constructed 
chamber (H. of R.) like the shrill notes of a fife. If his manner of speak¬ 
ing was harsh and unsympathetic, his matter when in debate was still 
more so. He indulged in the bitterest personalities, sarcasm, and cutting 
invective, exposed motives and imputed usually the most unfavorable, 
as his memoirs show, and in his whole course of action appeared very 
lightly bound to the current opinion of his time. He conciliated neither 
parties nor party idols. But in his courageous independence and fixed¬ 
ness of purpose lay the secret of his latest influence, which widened 
rapidly now that the rivalry of personal ambition was eliminated; for 
there was a sort of stubborn integrity about him, a passionate patriotism. 
His keen insight,too,and profound conception of coming dangers,made his 
guidance more powerful with his fellow-citizens than they were aware. 
Athletic in his studies, he dived into the depths of the subject which 
interested himself and the public, and brought up facts and motives. 
With family traditions and experience in public affairs, reaching back 
to the sources of our government, with systematic habits, of which the 
younger statesmen might despair, who were unwilling to give up the 
pleasures of social intercourse, Adams in his old age, knew more of his 
country’s history than any other living American. Reading and exper¬ 
ience made him full, journalizing made him exact.” 

— Schouler’s U. S. Hist., 185. 

THE RIGHT OF PETITION 

“I have felt it a sacred duty to present any petition, couched in re¬ 
spectful language, from any citizen of the U. S., be its object what it 
may, be the prayer of it that in which I could concur, or that to which 
I was utterly opposed. I adhere to the right of petition; and let me say 
here that let the petition be, as the gentleman from Virginia has stated, 
from the negroes, prostitutes, as he supposes—for he says there is one 
put on this paper, and he infers that the rest are of the same description, 
that has not altered my opinion at all. Where is your law that says that 
the mean, the low, and the degraded, shall be deprived of the right of 
petition, if their moral character is not good? Where is the land of free 
men ? Was the right of petition ever placed on the exclusive basis of morality 
and virtue? Petition is supplication—it is entreaty—it is prayer! And 
where is the degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen 
of the right to supplicate for a boon, or to pray for mercy? Where is 
such a law to be found? It does not belong to the most abject despotism. 
There is no absolute monarch on earth who is not compelled, by the 
constitution of his country, to receive the petitions of his people, whoso¬ 
ever they may be. The Sultan of Constantinople cannot walk the streets 
and refuse to receive petitions from the meanest and vilest in the land. 
This is the law even of despotism; and what does your law say? Does 
it say, that, before presenting a petition, you shall look into it and see 
whether it comes from the virtuous and the great and the mighty? No, 
sir, it says no such thing. The right of petition belongs to all; and so 
far from refusing to present a petition because it might come from those 
low in the estimation of the world, it would be an additional incentive, 
if such an incentive were wanting.” 


CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Jr. (1835-1915), 
Massachusetts 


PAST AND PRESENT 

“We are told in those, our ’prentice days, of the heroism of the past 
and the materialism of our present, when ‘who but fool would have faith 
in a tradesman’s wares or his word,’ and ‘only not all, all men lied;’ and 
yet, when, in 1853, you, Mr. President (Charles W. Eliot) the young 
journeyman, descended, as I, the coming apprentice, ascended those 
steps (to enter Harvard), ‘the cobweb woven across the cannon’s mouth’ 
still shook ‘its threaded tears in the wind.’ Eight years later the cobweb 
was swept away; and though, as the names graven on the tablets at the 
entrance of the hall bear witness, ‘many were crushed in the clash of 
jarring claims,’ yet we, too, felt the heart of a people beat with one desire, 
and witnessed the sudden making of splendid names. I detract nothing 
from the halo of knighthood which surrounds the heads of Sidney and 
of Bayard; but I was the contemporary of Savage, of Lowell, and 
Shaw. I had read of battles and ‘the imminent deadly breach;’ but it 
was given to me to stand on the field of Gettysburg when the solid 
earth trembled under the assault of that Confederate Virginian column, 
then performing a feat of arms than which I verily believe none in a 
recorded warfare was ever more persistent, more deadly or more per¬ 
sistent, more deadly or more heroic. 

“And our prophet (Carlyle) spoke to us of silent work, and he held 
up before us the sturdy patience of the past in sharp contrast with 
the garrulous self-evidence of that deteriorated present, of which we were 
to be a part; and yet, scarcely did we stand on the threshold of our time, 
when a modest English naturalist and observer broke years of silence 
by quietly uttering the word which relegated to the domain of fable 
that which, since the days of Moses, has been accepted as the foundation 
of religious belief. In the time of our apprenticeship we still read of 
the mystery of Africa in the pages of Heroditus, while the sources of the 
Nile were as unknown to our world as to the world of the Pharaohs; 
then one day a patient, long-suffering, solitary explorer emerged from 
the wilderness, and the secret was revealed. In our own time and before 
our purblind eyes, scarcely realizing what they saw or knowing enough 
to wonder, Livingstone eclipsed Columbus, and Darwin rewrote Genesis. 
The Paladin we had been told was a thing of the past; ours was the era 
of the commonplace; and, lo! Garibaldi burst like a rocket above the 
horizon, and the legends of Colchis and the crusader were eclipsed by 
the newspaper record of current events. The eloquent voice from 
Cheyne Row still echoed in our ears, lamenting the degeneracy of a time 
given over to idle talk and the worship of mammon, defiled by charlatans 
and devoid of workers; and in answer, as it were, Cavour and Lincoln 
and Bismarck crossed the world stage before us, and joined the immortals. 
We saw a dreaming adventurer, in the name of a legend, possess himself 
of France and of imperial power. A structure of tinsel was reared, and 
glittered in the midst of an age of actualities. Then all at once came 
the nineteenth century Nemesis, and, eclipsing the avenging deity of 
which we had read in our classics, drowned in blood and obliterated with 
iron the shams and charlatans who, our teacher had told us, were the 
essence and characteristic of the age.” 

—From address, ^Lessons of Lifef at Harvard Alumni dinner 

Cambridge, Mass., June 26, 1895. 


18 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was a son of Charles Francis Adams 
(1807-1886), who was a son of John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), and there¬ 
fore, a grandson of J. Q. Adams. Was a lawyer in Boston, graduated 
from Harvard in 1856; was a brother of Henry Adams (1838- ), 

author and American historian, who wrote the ‘Education of Henry 
Adams.’— The Author. 


THE GROWTH OF PRINCIPLES 

“At the sea-shore you pick up a pebble, fashioned after a law of nature, 
in the exact form that best resists pressure, and worn as smooth as glass. 
It is so perfect that you take it as a keepsake. But could you know its 
history from the time when a rough fragment of rock fell from the over¬ 
hanging cliff into the sea, to be taken possession of by the under cur¬ 
rents, and dragged from one ocean to another, perhaps around the world, 
for a hundred years, until in reduced and perfect form it was cast upon 
the beach as you find it, you would have a fit illustration of what many 
principles, now in familiar use, have endured, thus tried, tortured and 
fashioned during the ages. We stand by the river and admire the great 
body of water fiowing so sweetly on; could you trace it back to its source, 
you might find a mere rivulet, but meandering on, joined by other streams 
and by secret springs, and fed by the rains and dews of heaven, it gathers 
volume and force, makes its way through the gorges of the mountains, 
plows, widens and deepens its channel through the provinces, and attains 
its present majesty. Thus it is that our truest systems of science had 
small beginnings, gradual and countless contributions, and finally took 
their place in use, as each of you, from helpless childhood and feeble 
boyhood, have grown to your present strength and maturity. No such 
system could be born in a day. * * * 

“It took a long time to learn the true nature and office of governments; 
to discover and secure the principles commonly indicated by such terms 
as ‘Magna Charta,’ the ‘Bill of Rights,’ ‘Habeas Corpus,’ and the ‘Right 
of trial by Jury;’ to found the family ties of each member of it, so that 
the music of the domestic hearth might fiow on without discord; the 
household gods so securely planted that ‘Though the wind and the rain 
might enter, the king could not;’ to educate noise into music, and music 
into melody; to infuse into the social code and into the law a spirit of 
Christian Charity, something of the benign temper of the New Testament, 
so that no man could be persecuted for conscience sake, so that there 
should be an end of human sacrifice for mere faith or opinion; the smoulder¬ 
ing fires at the foot of the stake put out, now, thank God, as effectually 
as if all the waters that this night fiood the rivers had been poured in 
upon them. It took a long time to learn that war was a foolish and cruel 
method of settling international differences as compared with arbitra¬ 
tion; to learn that piracy was less profitable than a liberal commerce; 
that unpaid labor was not as good as well requited toil; that a splenetic 
old woman, falling into trances and shrieking prophecies, was a Rt 
subject for the asylum rather to be burned as a witch. It took a long time 
after the art of printing had been perfected before we learned the price¬ 
less value, the sovereign dignity and usefulness of a free press. 

“But these lessons have been taught and learned; taught for the most 
part by the prophets of our race, men living in advance of their age, and 
understood only by the succeeding generations. But you have the in¬ 
heritance.” 

— Hon. Joseph Neilson, Chief Justice of the City Court of Brooklyn, 

from address at Saratoga, Aug. 1, 1875. 



FISHER AMES (1758-1808), Massachusetts 


THE LAWS OF MOSES, SHOULD BE STUDIED 

“No man can be a sound lawyer who is not well read in the laws of 
Moses.” 


GREATNESS 

“The most substantial glory of a country is in its virtuous men. Its 
prosperity will depend on its docility to learn from their example.” 


A FEEBLE GOVERNMENT 

“A feeble government produces more factions than an oppressive one.” 


ELOQUENCE 

“No man ever did, or ever will become most truly eloquent, without 
being a constant reader of the Bible, and the admirer of the purity and 
sublimity of its language.” 

PATRIOTISM 

“What is patriotism? Is it narrow affection for the spot where a 
man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this 
ardent preference because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the 
character of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended 
self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself 
with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws 
of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we 
see not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our 
country’s honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and 
cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk 
his life in its defense, and is conscious tij-at he gains protection while 
he gives it. For what rights of a citizen will be deemed invincible when 
a State renounces the principles that constitutes that security? Or if 
this life should not be invaded,what would its enjoyments be in a country 
odious in the eyes of strangers and dishonored in his own? Could he 
look with affection and veneration to such a country as his parent ? The 
sense of having one would die within him; he would blush for his patriot¬ 
ism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would 
be a banished man in his native land. I see no exception to the respect 
that is paid among nations to the law of good faith. If there are cases 
in this enlightened period when it is violated, there are none when it 
is decried. It is the philosophy of pohtics, the religion of governments. 
It is observed by barbarians, that a whiff of tobacco smoke or a string of 
beads gives not merely binding force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Al¬ 
giers, a truce maybe bought formoney, but when ratified, even Algiers is. 
too wise, or too just, to disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, 
neither the ignorance of savages, nor the principles of an association 
for piracy and rapine, permit a nation to despise its engagements. If 
sir, there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the 
victims of justice could live again, collect together, and form a society, 
they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice 
under which they fell, the fundemental law of their state. They would 


20 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


perceive it their interest to make others respect, and they would, there¬ 
fore, soon pay some respect themselves to the obligations of good faith.” 
—Fisher Ames, from speech in House of Representatives, 1796; 
To Pass Laws necessary for Carrying the Treaty with Great Britain 
into Effect. 

Ames was a graduate of Harvard; admitted to the Bar in 1781; a 
member of Mass. Convention for ratifying the Federal Constitution; 
Member of Congress from Boston district, elected over Samuel Adams; 
served four terms; chosen Pres. Harvard College, 1804, but declined on 
account of health. He was a strong Federalist, a follower of Hamilton. 
— The Author. 

SAMUEL DEXTER 

“Dexter is very able and will be an Ajax at the bar as long as he stays. 
You know his aversion to reading and to the practice is avowed. His 
head aches on reading a few hours, and if he did not love money very 
well he would not pursue the law.”— Fisher Ames. 

DEMOCRACY 

“Intellectual superiority is so far from conciliating confidence that 
it is the very spirit of a democracy, as in France, to proscribe the aris¬ 
tocracy of talents. To be the favorite of an ignorant multitude, a man 
must descend to their level; he must desire what they desire, and detest 
what they do not approve; he must yield to their prejudices. Instead 
of enlightening their errors, he must adopt them, and must furnish the 
sophistry that will propagate and defend them.” 


THE LAWYER 

“The school of the practicing lawyer enables him to acquire a practical 
acquaintance with human nature in all its multiple phases. He may learn 
what weakness may be pardoned; what excess of passion may be condoned. 
He may learn that there are in most instances two sides to every case. 
How apparent violations of right may be explained. How little differ¬ 
ence there is in the ^eat mass of human beings, and what are the secret 
springs of human actions which are hidden from the outside world, and he 
is, therefore, less disposed tofform a rash judgment of human actions. 
It belongs to the member of the legal profession to study the rights of 
individuals in their various relations to each other and to the state, 
and to see that they are secured by a just administration of the law. 
To do this demands as well a thorough knowledge of the principles of 
jurisprudence as taught by the masters of the profession, the special 
enactments of legislation, and the origin of customs which have ripened 
into laws by the judgment of competent tribunals, not, however, by 
too much reading, but by much reflection and reasoning upon what 
the law should be in a given case, as also the relations of different members 
of society to each other, the various industries which become subjects 
of contracts, the products of human gemus which in the progress of a 
rapid civilization have developed new industries and to what extent 
they have changed former conditions. In all legal controverises, in which 
engaged, to make a fair and honest presentation of the law and facts 
before the court. Above all things to avoid stirring up litigation, and 
when consulted by a chent to counsel settlement, when deemed desirable. 
Under all circumstances as an officer of the court to have the courage to 
defend the right, however assailed, whether by the voice of the multitude, 
or the despotism of a single individual clothed with official power.” 

—James Overton Broadhead, Mo. (1819-1898). 



JOHN APPLETON (1804-1891), Maine 

Was a member of the Supreme Court of Maine for 31 years, 21 years 
Chief Justice. Was a great lover and master of books. Held in the 
following opinion that a person is liable for killing a dog. — The Author. 

THE DOG 

“The main question is whether a dog is a ‘domestic animal,' for if 
he be, the defendant is guilty by his own admission and should be held 
criminally liable. A dog is the subject of ownership. Trespass will lie 
for an injury to him. Trover is maintainable for his conversion. Replevin 
will restore him to the possession of his master. He may be bought and 
sold. An action may be held for his price. The owner has all the remedies 
for the vindication of his rights of property in this animal as in any 
other species of personal property he may possess. He is a domestic 
animal. From the time of the pyramids to the present day, from the 
frozen pole to the torrid zone, wherever man has been there has been his 
dog. Cuvier has asserted that the dog was perhaps necessary for the estab¬ 
lishment of civil society and that a little reflection will convince us 
that barbarous nations owe much of their civilization above the brute 
to the possession of the dog. He is the friend and companion of his 
master, accompanying him in his walks, his servant, aiding him in his 
hunting, the playmate of his children, an intimate of his house, protecting 
it against all assailants. 

“It may be said that he was ferae naturae, but all animals, naturalists 
say, were originally ferae naturae (by nature wild), but have been re¬ 
claimed by man, as horses, sheep, cattle, but however tamed, they have 
never lived like the dog, become domesticated in the home under the 
roof and by the fireside of their master. The dog was a part of the 
agricultural establishment of the Romans and is treated as such. 
There was the canes villatici to guard the villa of the Roman senator, 
the canes venatici accompanying him in his hunting expeditions, and the 
canes pastorales by whom the flocks were guarded. Virgil in his ‘Georgies,’ 
has given direction as to their management and education. Today, 
in many countries they are used for draught, as in France and Holland, 
and everywhere regarded as possessing value, and as the subject matter 
of traffic. 

“The language of the statute is most general, ‘any domestic animal,’ 
The words are not technical or words of art. They are the words of the 
common people and should be construed as such. Nothing would more 
astonish the people for whom the laws are made than to learn that a 
bull or a hog was a domestic animal and that a dog was not. The lexi¬ 
cographers define a dog as a ‘domestic animal.’ ‘A well-known domestic 
animal.’—Johnson’s Dictionary. ‘A well-known domestic animal of 
the genus canis.' —Worcester’s Dictionary. In Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 
he is deflned as a ‘well-known domestic animal.’ Otway the poet says 
of them— 

‘They are honest creatures 

And ne’er betray their masters, never fawn 

On any they love not.’ 

“So, in the encyclopedias he is canis familiaris, and called a domestic 
animal; so that in the ordinary use of language, he is within the clear 
provisions of the statute under which this indictment was found. ‘The 
domestic dog has occasioned many legal disputes and the presumption 
of the common law of England is, that he is tame.’ (Campbell on Negli¬ 
gence, Sec. 27 ). * * * 


22 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“In the present case, the Newfoundland dog, ‘Rich,’ of the value of 
one hundred dollars, was ‘in the inclosure and immediate care of his 
master.’ He was domesticated. Whether the property of the master 
was originally of a qualified nature or not is immaterial. The dog was 
under his dominion and control. While this qualified property continues, 
it is as much under the protection of law as any other property and every 
invasion of it is redressed in the same manner.” 

—State V. Harriman, 75 Maine Reports, 562. {A dissenting opinion 
by Judge Appleton.) 

A FATHER’S LETTER TO HIS SON 

“My dearest boy:—Some thirty-five years ago I purchased these old 
classics which you will please accept as a birthday present. They were 
the beginning of what in the course of time has become a large and valuable 
.library. You have in them the ponderous sense of Johnson, the felicitous 
I wisdom of Bacon, the pleasant and amusing chit-chat of Walpole, the 
I quaintness of Cowley, who dreamed that his unread and forgotten epic 
I would bear him down to posterity with Homer and Virgil, the sweet 
I essays of Goldsmith, the freshness of Burns, the grace of Shenstone, 
I the scholarly stateliness of Gray,the dignified propriety of Clarendon and 
i the tenderness and piety of Lady Russell. The collection by the lapse 
; of time is rare. It contains nothing but what is of value and will introduce 
; you to those, who even now are numbered among the old authors of 
j the language. 

“I would, my dear boy, that I could make you a present correspondent 
in magnitude and value to the love I bear you. It would be huge in its 
dimensions and illimitable in its costliness, but you must take the will 
for the deed and remember that the value in a gift is in the love of the 
giver and not in the richness of the thing given. You have reached 
the years of manhood. Henceforth, legally, I cease to have any right 
to control. But paternal restraint has been so light you will find it 
difficult to appreciate the difference from the change of relations. Now, 
my dear boy, the story of your life must depend on your own integrity 
and sound judgment. Whatever an anxious solicitude for your pros¬ 
perity and honorable success can do by giving you the advice of one who 
has trodden the path of life before, whatever of means in my power to 
aid you, are at your service and the only regret I have had is that circum¬ 
stances have made them so restricted. Upon yourself you must rely. 
Upon whom else would you? Upon whom else should you? Each gener¬ 
ation must bear its own toils and its own burdens, plant its own fields 
and reap its own rewards and gather its own harvests. 

“I congratulate you upon your manhood. Your youth has been un¬ 
stained. May your manhood be without spot and blemish and your 
-old age full of the honors of a well spent life. Let strict temperance, 
stern and unswerving integrity and energetic industry be the rules of 
your life and there is nothing too high or elevated for your hopeful 
aspirations. 

“It seems hardly a day since we so gratefully greeted your birth. 
With equal gratitude we now greet your manhood, the cares and re¬ 
sponsibilities of life, and its grave and stern duties are upon you and they 
must be met. You cannot avoid them without dishonor—you cannot 
neglect them without disgrace. I may in many things have erred, if 
so your filial love will pardon and forget. To whom much is given, of him 
much is required, and you must remember paternal love is exacting. 

“We bid you God speed on the journey of life. Be of good cheer. Be 
always hopeful. Be courageous. The timid and the hesitating begin 
with failure and they end as- they begin. Let your aim be high and 
elevated and your efforts correspondent thereto, and may the blessings 
of God and the good will and approbation of all good men and the exceed- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


23 


ing love of your father and mother always accompany you and cheer 
you on. Ever your loving father, 

JOHN APPLETON, 

Bangor, Me., 

29th Aug., 1859.” 

THE DUTIES OF A JUDGE 

“The labors of the bench are continuous and increasing. The re¬ 
sponsibilities grave. The duties onerous. The subject matters of litiga¬ 
tion are co-extensive with the domain of the material and intellectual 
world. No branch of learning which may not be needed. No amount 
of labor which may not be required. The great end of judicial proceeding 
is that justice be done to parties litigant. The care of the Judge should 
be, to use the words of an eloquent divine, ‘when he goeth up to the 
judgment seat, to put on righteousness as a glorious and beautiful 
robe and to render his tribunal a fit emblem of that eternal throne of 
which justice and judgment are the eternal habitation.’ He should 
seek for the truth. He should present facts as they exist. He would be 
unfit for his position, if with the added experience of the bar and the 
bench, he could not better appreciate the force and effect of testimony 
and the deductions legitimately deducible therefrom than any tribunal 
selected by lot—composed of men of different pursuits and various call¬ 
ings not disciplined by habits of accurate reasoning and unaccustomed 
to weigh testimony or the degree of evidence to be given him; and he 
would be derelict of his duty if he omitted to clearly state to them the 
evidence and its bearings on the rights of the parties—thus aiding the 
jury in arriving at the truth. One side of every litigation is in the right 
and the other in the wrong. The Judge should so present a cause that 
the right and the wrong should appear. The tower of Pisa leaning, 
justice can hardly be promoted by affirming its perpendicularity. The 
less is not equal to the greater and the attempt to give the appearance of 
equality is but injustice.” ♦ 

—John Apfleton, upon retiring from the Bench, in September, 1883, 
after 31 years a Supreme Judge of Maine. 


LIABILITY OF JUDICIAL OFFICER, ABSENCE AS DISTIN¬ 
GUISHED FROM EXCESS OF JURISDICTION 

“A distinction must be here observed between excess of jurisdiction 
and the clear absence of all .jurisdiction over the subject-matter. Where 
there is clearly no jurisdiction over the subject-matter any authority 
exercised is a usurped authority, and for the exercise of such authority, 
when the want of jurisdiction is known to the judge, no excuse is per¬ 
missible. But where jurisdiction over the subject-matter is invested 
by law in the judge, or in the court which he holds, the manner and 
extent in which the jurisdiction shaU be exercised are generally as much 
questions for his determination as any other questions involved in, the 
case, altho upon the correctness of his determination in these particulars 
the validity of his judgments may depend. Thus, if a probate court, 
invested only with authority over wills and the settlement of estates 
of deceased persons, should proceed to try parties for public offenses, 
jurisdiction over the subject of offenses being entirely wanting in the 
court, and this being necessarily known to its judge, his commission would 
afford no protection to him in the exercise of the usurped authority. 
But if on the other hand a judge of a criminal court, invested with general 
criminal jurisdiction over offenses committed within a certain district, 
should hold a particular act to be a public offense, which is not by the 
law made an offense, and proceed to the arrest and trial of a party charged 
with such act, or should sentence a party convicted to a greater punish¬ 
ment than that authorized by the law upon its proper construction, no 



24 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


personal liability to civil action for such acts would attach to the judge, 
altho those acts would be in excess of his jurisdiction, or of the jurisdic¬ 
tion of the court held by him, for these are particulars for his judicial 
consideration, whenever his general jurisdiction over the subject-matter 
is invoked. Indeed, some of the most difficult and embarrassing questions 
which a judicial officer is called upon to consider and determine relate 
to his jurisdiction, or that of the court held by him, or the manner in 
which the jurisdiction shall be exercised. And the same principle of 
exemption from liability which obtains for errors committed in the ordi¬ 
nary prosecution of a suit where there is jurisdiction of both subject 
and person, applies in cases of this kind, and for the same reasons.” 

—Associate Justice Stephen J. Field, in Bradley v. Fisher, 13 

Wall, 351-2. _ 

THE IDEAL LAWYER 

“Gentlemen of the graduating class of the Yale Law School: I commend 
to you the cultivation of a spirit that will enable you to take a healthy, 
sound, and cheerful view of government, believing that the tendency 
is toward improvement, not deterioration. I would wish you to realize 
and appreciate the humane direction in which recent reforms of juris¬ 
prudence have been progressing, and to see to it that, so far as you can 
aid, the spirit of mercifulness shall not be suffered to decline. The 
further maintenance of the high authority and repute of our Anglo-Saxon 
jurisprudence as the foundation of our progress and prosperity and the 
safeguard of our liberties is entrusted to the bar. The world will judge 
of the system according to the manner in which its ministers administer 
it. Beyond his immediate duty to his client, the lawyer has a larger 
and wider sphere of duty to the State, in illustrating, supporting, and 
maintaining the priceless value of that system of law and justice which 
is the heritage of the American people. As the character of the members 
of that profession is sound, patriotic^^ and pure, so will legislation, the 
administration of public office and general public sentiment continue 
upon lines of justice, safety, and conservatism. 

“So I urge you not to strive exclusively for the pecuniary rewards of 
your profession, but to look forward to a career of influence and useful¬ 
ness that shall include your neighborhood, your State, your Country, 
within its beneficent reach. For your example let me commend the ideal 
of the good lawyer—I do not say the great, but the good lawyer—an 
ideal that has been realized in the life of every substantial city and court, 
especially in the older neighborhoods; a man £>i kindly and benignant dis¬ 
position, friendly alike with his well-to-do and his poorer fellow townsmen, 
acquainted with their habits and individual history, and with a pretty 
accurate notion of their opinions and prejudices as well as their ways and 
means; genial and sociable, yet dignified and self-contained; of staid and 
comfortable appearance; in manner alert; in conversation always moderate 
and respectful; shrewd in his observations, wise, but with perennial humor 
and Jove of pleasantry; as a citizen always concerned and active in the 
interests of his town, his state and his country; not an agitator, nor a per¬ 
petual fault-finder, nor giving out the intimation that he is better or 
wiser than others; but ready to confer, to adjust, to agree, to get the best 
possible, if not the utmost that is desirable; to him the people turn in 
local emergencies for guidance and counsel on their public affairs—even 
partisanship fearing not to trust to his honor and wisdom; so free from 
all cause of offense that there is no tongue to lay a word against his pure 
integrity—too dignified and respectful to tempt familiarity; too genial 
and generous to provoke envy or jealousy; revered by his brethren of the 
bar; helpful and kindly to the young; in manners suave and polite, with 
a fine courtliness of the old flavor—what Clarendon described in John 
Hampden as ‘a flowing courtesy toward all men.’ ” 

—John W. Griggs, Attorney-General under Wm. McKinley, 1898-91. 



JOHN H. ATWOOD, (Missouri) 

John H. Atwood, formerly of the Atchison, Kans., Bar, now of the 
Kansas City, Mo., Bar, when practicing in the city of Leavenworth, 
was called in to defend Judge Douglass, also of Leavenworth, who had 
been sued by Colonel Anthony, also of Leavenworth. 

When Col. Anthony brought his suit against Judge Douglass, he 
retained Judge Lucian Baker; but when the suit came to trial. Judge 
Baker was a United States Senator, in Washington, D. C. The firm 
in Leavenworth, was Baker, Hood and Atwood. As Atwood was the 
only trial la'^er, who could cope with Judge Douglass, Col. D. R. Anthony, 
swallowed his enmity to Atwood, and insisted upon the latter conducting 
the case. Atwood, who had perfect contempt for Anthony, as Col. 
Anthony, a rabid Republican, had abused Atwood, a rising young Dem¬ 
ocratic lawyer, Atwood took this occasion to get even with his old news¬ 
paper enemy, in the following speech: 

A PLEA FOR DOUGLASS 

“May it please the Court: I congratulate myself upon the judicial 
frame of mind in which I am enabled to approach a consideration of 
this case. For my perfected appreciation of . the many virtues that Judge 
Douglass possesses and Col. Anthony’s failure to appreciate any of mine, 
leaves me in a state delightfully impartial. Ordinarily, a lawyer’s zeal 
for his client’s cause outruns his judgment, but when that client has 
knocked out the bung from the hogshead of his wrath and deluged him 
with its contents until he wades up to his middle in troubled waters, 
a situation is presented that tends to neutralize the lawyer’s zeal until 
it is reduced to a judicial calmness that is without bias; and I am able 
to undertake a discussion of this case without prejudice, passion or 
any feeling. 

“The one thing that is wrong about this case is that your Honor cannot 
find against both parties to this suit. From the standpoint of personal 
merit neither of them ought to win. Neither of them came into court 
with clean hands, and I have doubts about their feet. But Anthony has 
paid the taxes for many years on the property, and in so doing has con¬ 
tributed to the revenue of the State and County. This is playing the 
part of the good citizen, a part that is new to him and sets awkwardly 
upon him, and one that startles the community with its novelty. But 
since he is playing this part he ought to be encouraged in it by being 
permitted to win this suit. When you find one doing right for the first 
time in his life, the thought of discouraging him revolts the judicial 
conscience. 

“It is said that Anthony stole horses in Missouri, I reply that Douglass 
has stolen homesteads in Kansas. It is said that Anthony has been a 
detriment to the community, I reply that Douglass has never paid a 
debt he owed in the community. If it is said that Anthony has been 
sued often, I reply that Douglass has sued others twi(3e as often. 

“I will admit, your Honor, that it is a choice of evils; one of the evils 
has a hooked nose, and the other has a peg-leg, but the hooked nose 
pays his taxes and the peg-leg doesn’t, and that is where my side has the 
best of it. If you feel inclined to decide this case in favor of my opponent 
because of the delightful sentiments that cluster around his name, 
and through your mind should float the beautiful strain of ‘Douglass, 
tender and true,’ I ask you to remember that my client claims a saint 
among his ancestors. I will admit that the claim never has been allowed, 
but we make it all the same. 


26 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“Your Honor may think they are two old devils together, but I submit 
we are not responsible for the age of Judge Douglass’ iniquities. To be 
sure the great age of my client is an evidence that they ‘whom the Gods 
love die young,’ but that does not alter the fact that he, and he alone, 
of these men, has paid his taxes. 

“So, I ask your Honor, to overlook the fact that my client has usually 
been wrong, and remember that now, for once in his life, he is right. 
Let his wickedness hide itself in a measure behind the wickedness of 
Douglass. I can see that your Honor is itching to hit them both, and 
ordinarily you could not hit them a lick amiss, but I pray your Honor 
to remember that you can’t beat them both, much as they deserve it, 
and since you must give the case to one of them, I ask your Honor to 
shut your eyes and give it to Anthony.” 


DUTY AND IMPORTANCE OF THE LAW 

“He who aspires to a thorough acquaintance with legal science, should 
cultivate the most enlarged ideas of its traneendent dignity, its vital 
importance, its boundless extent and infinite variety. As it relates to 
the conduct of man, it is a moral science of great sublimity; as its object 
is individual and national happiness, it is, of all others, the most important; 
as it respects the moral actions of men, and of nations, it is infinitely 
varied; and as it concerns all his rights and obligations, either derived 
from, or due to his God, his neighbor, his country, or himself, it must 
necessarily be a science of vast extent. To an elevated and dignified 
view of this august science, cultivated and fostered, perhaps, through a 
whole life, we may attribute the astonishing progress made in it by a 
few; whilst, on the other hand, those who have attained even a sciolous 
knowledge, have accorded to it the homage of their profoundest respect, 
and considered it, as of all others, the most noble. 

“Those among the ancients and moderns, who have paid a tribute of 
respect to this science, appear to have been at a loss to find in the language 
of eulogy and eloquence terms sufficiently expressive of their great 
admiration. Hence, the enthusiasm of Hooker vented itself in the follow¬ 
ing sublime strain, ‘Of Law no less can be said, than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven 
and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the 
greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and the 
creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and 
manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of 
their peace.’ ”— David Hoffman’s ^Legal Study.’ Proem 


NEGOTIABLE PAPER 

“Fortunes, vaster in amount than the dowries of monarchs, are daily 
committed, in our commercial cities, to the keeping of these frail, but 
precious fabrics known as negotiable papers. With good faith crowned 
as their patron goddess, and fortune as their ward, they attract to their 
consideration and protection, jiot only the hunters of wealth, but as 
weU the good who cherish sentiments of inte^ity, and the learned and 
great who expound the principles by which it shall be jealously 
guarded and maintained._ * * The pioneer who stood on the 

borders of our western civilization thirty years ago, and who today 
sees the same landscape, then covered with primeval forests or stretching 
wide in solitary prairies, and teeming with the industries of crowded 
millions, recognizes a change not more marked than that which has been 
exhibited in the rapid and diversified development of negotiable instru¬ 
ments.”— John W. Daniel, from his treatise, ^Negotiable Instruments.’ 




FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626), England 


THOUGHTS FROM BACON 

“The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of counsel.” 

THE AGED 

“Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, 
repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, 
but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.” 

APOTHEMS 

“Nor do apothems only serve for ornament and delight, but also 
for action and civil use, as being the edge tools of speech, which cut 
and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.” 

PRAISE FROM COMMON PEOPLE 

“Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows 
the vain than the virtuous.” 

HOUSES ARE FOR USE 

“Houses are built to live in, more than to look on; therefore, let use 
be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.” 

BEST ARMOR 

“The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.” 

ATHEISM 

“Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man. * * * Qod 

never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His ordinary works 
convince it.” 

BASHFULNESS 

“Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his senti¬ 
ments and in understanding what is proposed to him; it is therefore 
good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company 
of the better sort.” 

THE BIBLE 

“There never was found, in any age of the world, either religion or 
law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible.” 

BOASTING 

“The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it.”— 
Bacon said to Sir Edward Coke, when the latter was boasting. 

BOOKS 

“Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; and some few to be 
chewed and digested.” 


28 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


CHANGE 

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” 

FREE-MINDED AND CHEERFUL 

“To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meals, and 
of sleep, and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long-lasting.” 

CHILDREN 

“Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter. 
They increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of 
death.” 

CHRISTIANITY 

“There never was found in any age of the world, either philosophy, 
or sect, or religion, or law, or discipline, which did so highly exalt the 
good of the community, and increase private and particular good as 
the holy Christian faith. Hence, it clearly appears that it was one and 
the same God that gave the Christian law to men, who gave the laws of 
nature to the creatures.” 

CLEANLINESS 

“Cleanliness of body was never esteemed to proceed from a due 
reverence to God.” 

COMPANIONSHIP 

“It is good discretion not to make too much of any man at the first, 
because one cannot hold out in that proportion.” 

MONEY 

“If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous 
man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said 
to possess him.” 

CUNNING 

“We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom, and certainly 
there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man, not 
only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.” 

CUSTOM 

“Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak accord¬ 
ing to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally act according 
to custom.” 

DEATH 

“It is as natural to a man to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, 
perhaps the one is as painful as the other.” 

DISCRETION 

“Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.” 

DISPATCH 

“Measure not dispatch by the times of sitting, but by the advancement 
of business.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


29 


DOUBT 

“In contemplation, if a man begins with certainties he shall end in 
doubts; but if he be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certain¬ 
ties.” 

DRUNKENNESS 

“All the armies on earth do not destroy so many of the human race, 
nor alienate so much property, as drunkenness.” 

DUTY 

“When the soul resolves to perform every duty, immediately it is 
conscious of the presence of God.” 

ECONOMY 

“A Man’s ordinary expenses ought to be but to the half of his receipts, 
and if he think to wax rich, but to the third part.” 

ENVY 

“A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; 
for men’s minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon other’s 
evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and who so is 
out of hope to attain to another’s virtue will seek to come at even hand 
by depressing another’s virtue.” 


EXCESS 

“The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of 
knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, 
neither can man or angels come into danger by it.” 

EXPENSE 

“Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; 
therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the 
occasion.” 

FACE 

“A beautiful face is a silent commendation.” 

FAME 

“Good fame is hke fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve 
it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.” 

FLATTERY 

“It has been well said that the arch-flatterer with whom all petty flat¬ 
terers have intelligence, is a man’s self.” 

GOODNESS 

“Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, 
being the character of the Diety; and without it, man is a busy, mis¬ 
chievous, wretched thing.” 


30 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


GRACE 

“A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.” 

HABIT 

“Habit, is wisely and skilfully formed, becomes truly second nature; 
but unskilfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the 
ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and 
awkwardly.” 

HISTORY 

“Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private 
records, and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the 
like, we do save and recover somewhat from the doings of time.” 

HOPE 

“Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to 
prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth 
the fancy with expectation of good.” 

HYPROCRISY 

“A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.” 

IDLENESS 

“Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.” 

IMPATIENCE 

“Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul. Men must 
not turn bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.” 

INACTIVITY 

“Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense without prejudice 
’till you resolve.” 

INSTINCT 

“Who taught the parrot his ‘Welcome?’ Who taught the raven in a 
drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree where she espied water, 
that the water might rise so as she might come to it? Who taught 
the bee to sail through such a vast sea of air, and to find the way from a 
flower in a field to her hive? Who taught the ant to bite every grain 
of corn that she burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow?” 

JESTING 

“As for jesting, there be certain things which ought to be privileged 
from it, viz., religion, matters of state, great persons, and business of 
importance, and any case that deserveth pity.” 

JUDGES 

“Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than 
plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity 
is their portion and proper virtue.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


31 


KNOWLEDGE 

“Knowledge is not a couch whereon to rest a searching and restless 
spirit; or a terrace for a wandering mind to walk up and down with a 
fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; 
or a sort of commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for 
profit and sale; but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the 
relief of man’s estate.” 

LIBRARIES 


“Libraries are the shrines where all the relics of saints, full of true 
virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and re¬ 
posed.” 

MARRIAGE 

“He that hath wife and children, hath given hostages to fortune; 
for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. 
Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.” 

MODERATION 

“I know a wise man who had for a byword, when he saw men hasten 
to a conclusion, ‘stay a little that we may come to the end sooner.’ ” 

MONEY 

“Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.” 

POLITENESS 


“The wise are polite all the world over; fools are polite only at home.” 


PROSPERITY 

“The virtue of prosperity is temperance, but the virtue of adversity 
is fortitude; and the last is the more sublime attainment.” 

PROVERBS 

“The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.” 


READING 

“Reading serves for delight, for ornament, for ability. The crafty 
condemn it; the simple admire it; the wise use it.” 


READING 


“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing 
an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a 
good memory; if he confer little, he need have a present wit; and if he 
read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he 


doth not.” 


REVENGE 


“By taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing 
over it, he is superior.” 

RICHES 


“I cannot call riches by a better name than the ‘baggage’ of virtue; 
the Roman word is better, 'impediment.' For as the baggage is to an 
army, so are riches to virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, and yet 


32 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or dis- 
turbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use, except in the 
distribution; the rest is but conceit.” 

THOUGHT 

“A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down 
the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly 
the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return.” 

VANITY 

“It was prettily devised of Aesop that the fly sat upon the axletree 
of the chariot-wheel, and said, ‘What a dust do I raise!’ So are there 
some vain persons that, whatsoever goeth alone or moveth upon greater 
means, if they have never so little hand in it, they think it is they that 
carry it.” 

Bacon, was born three years before Shakespeare, and lived ten years 
longer; born twelve years after Coke, and died eight years before; and 
born twenty-three years before Seldon, and died twenty-eight years 
before Selden departed; but these three great lawyers were contempor¬ 
aries (as Shakespeare knew almost as much of the theory of the law, as 
did Coke and Bacon of its practice.) The great lawyer and philosopher, 
Thomas Hobbes, and the poet and dramatist, Ben Jonson, were of that 
period. 

Lord Campbell says of Bacon, who died in the sixty-sixth year of his 
age, “He was not merely the most distinguished man who ever held 
the Great Seal of England, but notwithstanding all his faults, one of the 
greatest ornaments and benefactors of the human race.” Says Johnson 
in his Life of Coke: “The two finest prose essays in the English language, 
are Lord Bacon’s ‘Essay on the Advancement of Learning,’ and Milton’s 
tract on ‘The Freedon of the Press.’ ” Charlton T. Lewis, in the ‘Library 
of the World’s Best Literature,’ says: “If the two greatest names in the 
history of the common law were to be selected by the suffrage of the 
profession, the great majority would be cast for Coke and Bacon. As a 
master of the intricacies of precedent and an authority upon the detailed 
formulas of ‘the perfection of reason,’ Coke is unrivalled still; but in 
the comprehensive grasp of the law as a system for the maintenance 
of. social order and the protection of individual rights. Bacon rose far 
above him.” 

Bacon’s annual income as Attorney-General under James, outside of 
his office, was over $30,000. Says David Hume: “As a public speaker, 
a man of business, a wit, a courtier, a companion, and author, a philoso¬ 
pher; he is justly the object of great admiration.” And this notwith¬ 
standing, called by Pope, “the wisest, the brightest, the meanest of 
mankind,” and that he was convicted of bribery by Parliament, and 
sentenced to pay a fine of $200,000, and was actually sent to the Tower, 
but'pardoned by the King; though he lived but five years after his dis¬ 
grace. Yet, while Lord Chancellor, not one of the seven thousand cases 
which he decided has been reversed.—-TAe Author. 

(See Bacon and Coke compared, under article, William T. Hughes.) 


ROGER SHERMAN BALDWIN (1793-1863), Connecticut 

CMef Justice of Conn.; Professor of Law in Yale University; ex¬ 
president of the American Bar Ass’n. 

THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT 

“The Senator from Virginia has thought proper to refer disparagingly, 
to the conduct of the State of Connecticut in reserving from her cession 
a portion of her public domain. I can inform that senator, sir, that Con¬ 
necticut, small as she is in territory, small as she was in population 
when compared with the State of Virginia, had more troops in the field 
than the great State of Virginia. This was stated by Chief-Justice 
Ellsworth, one of the delegates from Connecticut in the convention which 
formed the constitution of the U. S.; and no delegate from Virginia—• 
though Mr. Madison was present and participated in the debate ventured 
to deny it. And yet the senator from Virginia says he looks almost with 
indignation upon the State of Connecticut, because one of her senators, 
in the performance of a duty imposed upon him as a member of one of 
the committees of this body, has thought proper to rebuke the frauds 
which have been committed by individuals in the State, which 
that senator has the honor to represent. Sir, Virginia, is a noble 
State; I impute nothing dishonorable to her. But inasmuch as I have 
deemed it my duty to rebuke those frauds, the senator alludes in terms 
of disparagement to the State which gave me birth, and which I have 
the honor to represent, because with all her revolutionary claims she 
thought proper, in ceding her western domain, to reserve a compara¬ 
tively small portion of it for the purposes of popular education. Sir, this 
reservation was not made for any mere private objects; it was not made 
to aid her in the discharge of her revolutionary responsibilities, or the 
payment of her civil-list expenditures, but for the noble purpose of pro¬ 
viding for the education of every child within her limits, and of peopling 
as well the magnificent territory which she ceded as that which she 
reserved, with an educated, enlightened, and enterprising population. 

“It was by this reservation that she laid the foundation of that magni¬ 
ficent school-fund which enabled those who took the census in 1840 to re¬ 
turn that they found in the whole State of Connecticut but five hundred 
and twenty-six persons of adult age who were not able to read and write; 
and these are believed to have been chiefly foreigners. Can the senator 
from Virginia say as much for his State, and appeal to the returns of the 
census to confirm him? 

“But, sir, it seems that the State of Virginia, in order to induce her 
citizens to share in the perils and glories of the revolution, was obliged 
to offer the enormous bounties, which I have already stated to the Senate. 
Sir, the citizens of Connecticut rushed at once to the combat. They 
were at Ticonderoga, sir. Yes, sir, they were there with Ethan Allen 
and his Green mountain boys—himself a native of Connecticut, at their 
head—on an expedition planned in Connecticut, and supplied from its 
public treasury, before the Continental Congress of 1775 and assembled— 
capturing the important fortress, almost before the blood had grown 
cold that was shed at Concord and at Lexington. They were at Bunker’s 
Hill with Putnam, and Knowlton, and Grosvenor, and their brave 
compatriots, who needed no bounty to induce them to engage in the 
service of their country. I need not dwell on the Revolutionary history 
of my State. It is known to all who hear me. Was it too much, then, 
I ask, when the State of Virginia, with fewer troops in the field than 
Connecticut, thought proper to reserve nine million acres of land in what 
is now the State of Kentucky, and three million, seven hundred thousand 
more in Ohio, in the cession of her claims to the Northwestern Territory, 


34 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


that the State of Connecticut should reserve three million acres of her 
territory for the free education of her children? The descendants of her 
sons who had bravely fought and many of whom had fallen, on the 
battle-fields of the Revolution, in the service of their country—a service 
in which they had engaged without any such inducements to stimulate 
their patriotism as were offered by Virginia to her sons ? Was it too much 
for them to ask? And is it for Virginia to cast reproach for this? No, 
Sir! No, Sir! 

“Sir, I do not propose at tliis time to go into the question of the title 
to this Northwestern Territory, which she professes to have ceded to the 
government of the U. S. If time permitted, sir, I could show that, while 
the State of Connecticut had a title to the lands which she reserved, 
the title of Virginia to the territory which she ceded was at least a doubtful 
one. And for all the services which are claimed to have been rendered 
in conquering that territory from the enemy, they have received a 
liberal reward from the government and been quartered on the public 
treasury.” 


DISTINCT POWERS CONFERRED ON CO-ORDINATE 
BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT 

“It is believed to be one of the chief merits of the American system of 
written constitutional law, that all the powers intrusted to government, 
whether State or national, are divided into three grand departments, 
the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. That the functions ap¬ 
propriate to each of these branches of government shall be vested in a 
separate body of public servants, and that the perfection of the system 
requires that the lines which separate and divide these departments 
shall be broadly and clearly defined. It is also essential to the successful 
working of this system that the persons intrusted with power in any one 
of these branches shall not be permitted to encroach upon the' powers 
confided to the others, but that each shall, by the law of its creation, be 
limited to the exercise of the powers appropriate to its own department 
and no other. To these general propositions there are in the Constitu¬ 
tion of the U. S. some important exceptions. One of these is, that the 
President is so far made a part of the legislative power, that his assent 
is required to the enactment of all statutes and resolutions of Congress. 

“This, however, is so only to a limited extent, for a bill may become 
a law notwithstanding the refusal of the President to approve it, by a 
vote of two-thirds of each House of Congress. So, also, the Senate is 
made a partaker in the functions of appointing officers and making 
treaties, which are supposed to be properly executive, by requiring its 
consent to the appointment of such officers and the ratification of trea¬ 
ties. The Senate also exercises the judicial power of trying impeachments, 
and the House of preferring articles of impeachment. 

“In the main, however, that instrument, the model on which are 
constructed the fundamental laws of the States, has blocked out with 
singular precision, and in bold lines, in its three primary articles, the 
allotment of power to the executive, the legislative, and the judicial 
departments of the government. It also remains true, as a general 
rule, that the powers confided by the Constitution to one of these depart¬ 
ments cannot be exercised by another.” 

—Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U. S., 190., by Associate Justice 
Samuel F. Miller. 



SIMEON E. BALDWIN (1840- ), Connecticut 


COLLEGES 

“But college, at best, can give us but a small part of an education. 
It is only the preface of the book, which she translates for us.” 

—^Educational Citizenship,’ 5. 

THE SWEETEST THING IN LIFE 

“The sweetest thing in life, outside the gifts of home, is to have power 
and to feel that you are exercising it well.”— Idem, 25. 

LOVE versus KNOWLEDGE 

“It has been said that what a boy loves, when he leaves school, is 
worth more to him, and the nation, than what he knows.” 

BIOGRAPHY 

“Carlyle says the history of the world is ‘the biography of great 
men.’ The student of large social movements will be more apt to declare 
it to be the story of the average man and the average level of the com¬ 
munity, in every generation. Certainly it is so in a country such as 
ours. This is a natural consequence of republican institutions.”— Idem, 77. 

THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE COURTS 

“Public officers in America act under a peculiar responsibility by reason 
of the universal absolutism of the courts. In no other country does the 
judiciary hold as important a place as in the United States, because here 
they have, and under the protection of our institutions dare to exercise, 
the immense power of declaring statutes unconstitutional, and, therefore 
void. The prerogative belongs equally to the judges of the States and the 
United States. Any State judge, from the highest to the lowest, can 
declare an Act of Congress unconstitutional, and refuse to enforce it, 
in the same manner he could deal with a statute of the State, though 
subject to ultimate review by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 

— Idem, 100-1. 

ENLARGEMENT OF GOVERNMENTAL POWER 

“The nature of political science has largely changed and broadened 
out during the last half century. Its aim formerly was to show how to 
fit the government of a people to the conditions of that people. It was 
something of local application. What it had of general principles was 
only important in determining the mode of such application. Then 
came the ocean cable, to bind the world together in point of time. The 
opening of Africa followed, and the formation of the Congo Free State. 
Europe pushed beyond the fringe of civilization which in ten thousand 
years had hardly spread beyond the coast line, and marked off her new 
spheres of influence. England seized upon ancient Egypt. France 
laid her hands upon Algiers, Tunis, and then Morocco, to be followed 
by Italy, reaching after Tripoli. Russia meanwhile has been creeping 
into China and Persia. Japan has entered the family of nations, and now 
holds her place among the great powers. The United States buy Alaska; 
construct an isthmian canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific; assume 
a protectorate over Cuba; reach into Asia, and seize the Phillipines. China 
Persia and Turkey accept republican institutions.”— Idem, 96-7. 


36 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


JUDGE BALDWIN—DEFENDING A DOUBTFUL CASE 

“A lawyer may well undertake a doubtful cause, but never can be 
righteously advocate what he knows is not law, nor can he counsel or 
assist in the evasion or disregard of law. It is one thing to secure for a 
client his rights concerning a past transaction, to insist that his guilt 
be legally proven, to claim in his behalf all that to which he is by law 
entitled. It is another thing to counsel and assist concerning a future 
course of action which either evades or disregards the law. * * * The 

protection of law, like the showers from the heavens, descends upon the 
just and the unjust alike. Who, indeed, is to determine the guilt or in¬ 
nocence of one prosecuted for crime? These are necessary functions of 
judges and juries, rather than lawyers.”— Judge Baldwin, 'The Young 
Man and The Law,’ p. 80-1. 

THE POWER OF RELIGION 

“ ‘Herbert Spencer,’ says Frederic Harrison, ‘looked to the unknow¬ 
able environment behind the world of sense and knowledge as the sphere 
and object of religion,’ and the world stands nearer to Spencer than any 
other scientist, that the only intelligible sphere of religion must be the 
knowable. The world disdains the thought that the knowable is im¬ 
mutably measured by any form of human experience. The world, in 
general, rejects it. It is unscientific. Who would have said a century 
ago that a voice of a friend speaking in Denver could be heard in New 
York, and recognized in every intonation as easily as if he were in the 
same room with him who is addressed? Who would have said twenty 
years ago that a ray of light could be so framed and directed as to light 
up the interior of the human body and show the skeleton within it? 
Who would have said ten years ago that there was a heat-producing 
mineral that never cooled ? What canons of scientific experience brought 
within the range of probable assumption marvels like these? Surely 
it is but reasonable to expect that the common people will look at each 
new discovery of such a kind as fresh proof of an intelligent creator, 
and another step nearer to knowledge of what He is. 

“The full power of such a belief is seldom felt by those who are them¬ 
selves unaffected by it. For this cause, if for no other, the historian whose 
judgments will be accepted by future generations must write in a relig¬ 
ious spirit. He cannot use a key too large for him to grasp. I mean 
here by religion a reverent consciousness of a power (be it a law or a 
spirit) manifest in nature, which is stronger than man and a sense of 
obligation to answer its demands. Its common fruits, ripened by human 
association, have through all historic times been what in those times 
passed for collective virtue and self-sacrifice. The historian must re¬ 
spect these qualities. He must share in them, so far at least as to recog¬ 
nize them in others, and recognize their controlling force.” 

Simeon E. Baldwin was President American Bar Ass’n.; professor of 
Constitutional Law, Yale University; and late President American 
Historical Ass’n. 

—From lecture, 'The Power of Religion,’ in 'The Meaning of Mod¬ 
ern Life,’ {lf.0 lectures). 


ICHABOD BARTLETT (1786-1853), New Hampshire 


AN INTERESTED EXECUTOR 

“The testator was a feeble and solitary female in the eve of life; the 
defendant was her religious teacher, the pastor of her church, writing 
an instrument making himself residuary legatee and executor of her 
estate, and with every possible inducement of interest not to create a 
legacy out of himself, contrary to her intention. Notwithstanding the 
clerical character of this executor, and the singleness of view with which 
he may have been supposed to have devoted himself to the spiritual 
concerns of his flock, the history of the ingenious stratagems with which 
the gentleman of his cloth evaded all the skill and care of Parliament, 
from the 7th of Edward I to the 9th of George II, shows that they are 
not always indifferent to their temporal interests. * * * The testator 

desires to be decently buried in the churchyard of St. John’s church 
at the discretion of the executor. Now, apply to this period the construc¬ 
tion contended for by the defendant, and let him have been averse from 
expending, as paying over the property to legal claimants, and the 
testator’s chance for burial would have been much more problematical 
than the good woman would ever have suspected.” 

—Ichabod Bartlett, who was against Jeremiah Mason, Judge Jere¬ 
miah Smith and Daniel Webster, in the Dartmouth College case, in 
N. H. Courts. 

BARTLETT’S TILT WITH HENRY .CLAY 

“I have been seriously advised by the Honorable Speaker (Clay). 
I ought doubtless to receive the advice with due deference; yet, however, 
criminal it might be, I feel inclined to say to him: ‘I thank you for your 
advice; more forasmuch as it was entirely gratuitous and uncalled for; 
but however inexperienced I may be, or however young, when I feel any 
need of lessons on the subject of political integrity, I feel myself of age 
to select my instructor. * * * Gentlemen were asked if they dare 

go home to their constituents, after voting against the resolution, or 
against the opinion of that honorable gentleman. I would not attempt 
to determine that. Where I shall go when I leave this House, I may 
not be able to say, but if not to my constituents, I certainly shall not go 
to the Grand Seignor, for I would make a bad slave, either at Con¬ 
stantinople or in this House. However obscure I may be, I have no 
constituents so humble as not to know that I dare do all my duty.’ 

BARTLETT’S PLEA IN A FRAUD CASE 

In Bell and Tuck v. Dow, two distinguished lawyers of the Rock¬ 
ingham, N. H., Bar, had bought a horse of a farmer at Hampton, for $30. 
They managed to get the steed as far as Exeter,where they lived, a distance 
of about ten miles; but the animal proved too weak to stand up to get 
his oats, and soon coUapsed, a total loss. The irate purchasers brought 
suit against the farmer for fraud in the sale. Bartlett was retained for 
the defense. He began his argument somewhat in this fashion: 

“Gentlemen of the Jury, before we consider the testimony that bears 
on the circumstances of this sale, let us for a moment see who are the 
parties to this suit. Whom have we here as plaintiffs? Two able, astute 
lawyers. Who is here as defendant? A plain farmer. One of these 
plaintiffs, gentlemen, is James Bell! A lawyer of talent and experience, 
a gentleman of such shrewdness, that when the rich corporations of Mas¬ 
sachusetts were hunting all over the State of New Hampshire, for the 


38 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GKEAT LAWYERS 


right kind of an attorney to protect their enormously valuable interests, 
at Lake Winnepesaukee, they selected him. Amos Tuck, another lawyer, 
gentlemen, of such marked success and distinction at the bar, that the 
people of this district have just chosen him to represent them in Congress. 
These two, keen-witted men, as if not content to trust their own sagacity 
and skill, proceeded to call in a third party to help them. They selected 
none other than Stephen W. Dearborn, gentlemen, the High Sheriff 
of this county, who is sitting in yonder box, a man known all this region 
roundabout as the sharpest horse-jockey to be found anywhere. And 
now, gentlemen, with this combination brought to bear on the subject, 
you are seriously asked to believe that they were cheated in a horse-trade, 
by my poor, simple, old client!” 

—From Frank W. Hackett’s article^ in Vol. 6 Green Bag, 105 {189If), 
on Ichahod Bartlett. 

OF REVOLUTIONARY STOCK 

Bartlett was of revolutionary stock. He and Webster were from the 
same town, and theirs were the two leading families in it. He was a 
‘little giant,’ four years younger than Webster; served three terms in 
Congress; was from a family eminent for physicians, preachers and 
jurists; he was indefatigable in preparation; eloquent in its highest 
sense; ready, witty and a popular idol. He was often pitted against 
Jeremiah Mason, and other great lawyers. Between Webster and 
Bartlett there existed a personal and political antipathy, which continued 
for years. This cropped out in the argument of the Dartmouth ease, 
at Exeter, N.H., and is very apparent from Mr.Webster’s correspondence. 
At the September term, 1817, the counsel for the College met at Exeter, 
thoroughly prepared for the argument.— Shirley’s ^College Causes’ 15^.. 

DESCRIPTION OF BARTLETT 

Ichabod Bartlett measured his strength with such men as Jeremiah 
Mason, Daniel Webster, George Sullivan and Jeremiah Smith. In the art 
of gaining verdicts, Mr. Bartlett was confessedly the equal of any one 
of these eminent lawyers. They, together with others less formidable 
as opponents in the trial of causes, secured an eminence that Rockingham 
County (with its shire towns of Portsmouth and Exeter), at the period 
mentioned, did possess a Bar of extraordinary degree of ability. 

Webster once said that he had practiced law, commencing before Justice 
Jackman, in Boscawen, who received his commission from George II, 
all the way up to the court of John Marshall, in Washington, and he 
had never found any place where the law was administered with so much 
precision and exactness as in the County of Rockingham. 

Bartlett was born July 24, 1786, at Salsbury, N. H., a small town 
on the Merrimac, 16 miles north of Concord, noted as the birthplace of 
Ezekiel and Daniel Webster. He was the sixth in a family of nine, of 
Dr. Jos. and Hannah Bartlett; and the sixth in descent from Richard 
Bartlett, who in 1633 was a passenger from England, in the “Mary and 
John,” and who not long after, settled in Newbury, Mass. Dr. Jos. 
Bartlett was the first physician who practiced in the town, having settled 
in Salsbury in 1771, at the age of twenty. Ichabod Bartlett entered Dart¬ 
mouth, in 1804, at eighteen years of age; taught school at the academy 
in his native town, during the winter vacation; while a senior, delivered 
a Fourth of July oration at Salsbury, which was printed in pamphlet 
form; upon graduation, entered the law-office of Moses Eastman, and 
later that of Parker Noyes, both graduates of Dartmouth; admitted 
to the local bar in 1811, and to the Supreme Court, 1813, on motion of 
John P. Hale. In 1819, was chosen Solicitor of Rockingham County. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


39 


He was gifted with a remarkable fluency, bright and quick upon his 
feet, and a most captivating manner with an audience; no young man at 
that day, gained wider popularity as a public speaker. Love of law and 
success at the bar, however, did not prevent his coming forward rapidly 
into political station. * * * jjis practice extended before long to 

all parts of the State. In 1822, while he was arguing to a jury at Gilman- 
town, W. H. Y. Hackett, afterwards a leading lawyer at Portsmouth, 
was induced to study law, and was so impressed by Bartlett’s wonderful 
ability, that he entered his office. Other lawyers retained him to argue 
their cases. Indeed, he enjoyed much the same prestige that Webster 
did. He was alert, adroit and daring; thoroughly prepared, and knew 
just what he purposed to do. His tactics were to worry and “nag” Mason. 
One of Mr. Mason’s admirers (when a student at the Academy) used to 
see the two pitted against each other at Exeter, said: 

“Bartlett was a man of wonderful adroitness in the management of 
a case, quick as a flash of lightning in the movements of his mind, whether 
to inflict or parry a blow. At first it seemed he was the keenest and most 
brilliant of them all; but before getting through a case, in which he and 
Mason were engaged, it was plain enough that he was obliged to put 
forth all his strength to sustain himself against an opponent who was 
hardly exerting himself at all.” 

Bartlett was not so profound a master of the common law as was 
Mason, but in the shifting phases of a jury trial, he was fully the equal 
of the great New England leader, in his readiness with the right word, 
and doing the right thing, leading to a successful verdict. The late 
Jas. W. Emery, of Portsmouth, who knew Bartlett thoroughly (they 
were once partners) used to say that no lawyer ever practiced in New 
Hampshire, who had more tact than Bartlett. At one time in Chief 
Justice Richardson’s court. Mason and Bartlett were on opposite sides. 
Mason was six feet six, and Bartlett was undersize and quick in every 
movement. Mason was greatly annoyed by Bartlett, then a very young 
man, until he could bear it no longer, he exclaimed contemptuously: 
“Why, I could put you in my pocket.” “Then, you’d have more law in 
your pocket than you have in your head,” was Bartlett’s quick reply. 


THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS 

“But while seeking these blissful glories for ourselves, let us strive to 
extend them to other lands. Let the bugles sound the truce of God to 
the whole world forever. Let the selfish boast of the Spartan women 
become the grand chorus of mankind, that they have never seen the 
smoke of an enemy’s camp. Let the iron belt of martial music, which 
now encompasses the earth, be exchanged for the golden cestus of peace, 
clothing all with celestial beauty. History dwells with fondness on the rev¬ 
erent homage that was bestowed, by massacring soldiers, on the spot 
occupied by the sepulcher of the Lord. Vain man! to restrain his regard 
to a few feet of sacred mold! The whole earth is the sepulcher of the 
Lord; nor can any righteous man profane any part thereof. Let us recog¬ 
nize this truth, and now, on this Sabbath of our country, lay a new stone 
in the grand temple of universal peace, whose dome shall be as lofty as the 
firmament of heaven, as broad and comprehensive as the earth itself.” 

—Charles Sumner, delivered in Boston, July J^th, 184-8. 



40 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ERSKINE’S EXALTATION OF THE LAW 

“I was bred, in my early youth, in two professions (the Navy and ' 
Army), the characteristic of which is honor. But after the experience of 
very many years, I can say with truth, that they cannot stand higher for 
honor than the profession of the law. Amid unexampled temptations, 
which, through human frailty, have produced their victims, the great bulk 
of the members of it are sound; and the cause is obvious: there is some¬ 
thing so beautiful and exalted in the faithful administration of justice, and 
departure from it is so odious and disgusting, that a perpetual monitor is 
raised up in the mind against the accesses of corruption. The same pro¬ 
tection ought also to apply to us, the highest of the Judges.” 

—Speech in the House of Lords,—trial of Queen Caroline, 1820. 


THE LAW 

“A fixed rule may give rise to occasional deviations from justice; 
but these amount to nothing more than the price which every member 
of the community may be called upon to pay for the advantage of an 
enlightened code. No laws can be framed sufficiently comprehensive 
to embrace the infinite varieties of human action, and the labors of the 
lawgiver must be confined to the development of those principles which 
constitute the support and security of society. He views man with refer¬ 
ence to the general good, and that alone. He legislates for man in general, 
—not for particular cases.” 

—Lord Erskine in the Banbury Peerage case, in the House of Lords. 


THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

“The supreme enemy of bad habits is religion. I do not mean this is 
necessary. I have known good men who were not religious, and bad 
men who pretended to be religious. But the man who in his heart of 
hearts, as well as in his daily walk, believes and practices the Christian 
faith, is helped by a power outside of himself, and above himself. His 
whole moral being is vitalized. I do not pretend to say this, so much from 
experience—I wish I might—but I do say it with all my might from obser¬ 
vation. The wisdom of Aurelius, Epictetus, Confucius, is a tonic to the 
soul; but the words of Jesus are life itself. As a mere matter of practical 
success in life; as a mere method of making the most out of himself, 
I would rather have a son, brother, or friend become a thorough-going 
Christian than to have any other single good fortune come to him. * * 
‘What,’ said Victor Hugo, ‘is the grandest thing in the world? The 
midst of the ocean on a cloudless night. And what is grander than that ? 
The starry heavens. What is grander than the starry heavens? The 
soul of man.’ And it is this soul of man, the noblest thing in all the 
universe, to which the Christian religion speaks. It is to lift ever up¬ 
ward the soul of man that all the world’s saints, statesmen, and heroes 
have prayed, and thought, and perished. It is to make free and give 
wings to the soul of man that this Christian civilization exists. That 
men and women shall be better, nobler, every day, that happiness 
shall be greater; that our country and the world shall steadily become 
a lovelier place to live in; that righteousness shall prevail is, after all, 
the purpose of all progress.” 

—Albert J. Beveridge, ^^Work and Habit,” before the Y. M. C. A., 

Indianapolis, Ind. 




THOMAS F. BAYARD (1828-1898), Delaware 

A LEGISLATOR’S DUTY 

“But, sir, the honorable Senator also stated, as a matter deterring us 
from our proper action on this bill, that the shadow of intimidation had 
entered the halls of Congress, and that members of this committee had 
joined in this report and presented this bill under actual fear of personal 
violence. Such a statement seems to me almost incredible. I may not 
read other men’s hearts and know what they have felt, nor can I measure 
the apprehension of personal danger felt by the honorable Senator. 
It seenas to me incredible. Fear, if I had it, had been the fear of doing 
wrong in this great juncture of public affairs, not the fear of the conse¬ 
quences of doing right. Had there been this intimidation tenfold repeated 
to which the Senator has alluded, and of which I have no knowledge, I 
should have scorned myself had I hesitated one moment in my onward 
march of duty on this subject. 

“ ‘Hate’s yell, or envy’s hiss, or folly’s bray.’—What are they to a man 
who, in the face of events such as now confront us, is doing that which 
his conscience dictates to him to do ? It has been more than one hundred 
years since a great judgment was delivered in Westminster Hall in 
England by one of the great judges of our English-speaking people. 
Lord Mansfield, when delivering judgment in the case of the King 
against John Wilkes, was assailed by threats of popular violence of every 
description, and he has placed upon record how such threats should be 
met by any public man who sees before him the clear star of duty and 
trims his bark only that he may follow it through darkness and through 
light. * * * President, in the course of my duty here as a rep¬ 

resentative of the rights of others, as a chosen and sworn public servant, 
I feel that I have no right to give my individual wishes, prejudices, 
interests, undue infiuence over my public action. To do so would be 
to commit a breach of trust in the powers confided in me. It is true I 
was chosen a Senator by a majority only, but not for a majority only. 
I was chosen by a party, but not for a party. I represent all the good 
people of the State who have sent me here. In my office as a Senator, I 
recognize no claim upon my action in the name and for the sake of party. 
The oath I have taken is to support the Constitution of my country’s 
government, not the fiat of any political organization, even could its 
will be ascertained. In sessions preceding the present I have adverted to 
the difficulty attending the settlement of this great question, and have 
urgently besought action in advance at a time when the measure adopted 
could not serve to predicate its results to either party. My failure 
then gave me great uneasiness, and filled me with anxiety; and yet I 
can now comprehend the wisdom concealed in my disappointment, for 
in the very emergency of this hour, in the shadow of the danger that has 
drawn so nigh to us, has been begotten in the hearts of American Senators 
and Representatives and the American People a spirit worthy qf the 
occasion—born to meet these difficulties, to cope with them, and God 
willing, to conquer them. 

“Animated by this spirit the partisan is enlarged into the patriot. 
Before it the lines of party sink into hazy obscurity; and the horizon, 
which bounds our view, reaches on every side to the uttermost verge of 
the great Republic. It is a spirit that exalts humanity, and imbued with 
it the souls of men soar into the pure air of unselfish devotion to the 
public welfare. It lighted with a smile the cheek of Curtius as he rode 
into the gulf; it guided the hand of Aristides as he sadly wrote upon the 
shell the sentence of his own banishment; it dwelt in the frozen earth¬ 
works of Valley Forge; and from time to time it has been an inmate of 


42 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the halls of legislation. I believe it is here today, and that the present 
measure was born under its influence.” 

—From Speech, “.4 Plea for Conciliation,” U. S. Senate, Jan. Si, 
1877. 

Mr. Bayard was the son of Jas. A. Bayard; admitted to the bar, 1851; 
was appointed U. S. District Attorney of Delaware in 1869; succeeded 
his father as U. S. Senator, and was re-elected in 1875 and 1881; was 
one of the Electoral Commission that decided the fate of the Hayes- 
Tilden contest; became Secretary of State in 1884; American Ambassa¬ 
dor to Great Britain, 1893-7; was leading member of the American 
Commission, which concluded in 1888, a treaty concerning the vexing 
Canadian fisheries question; Harvard. Oxford and Cambridge conferred 
honorary degrees upon him. 


THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE LAW 

Although much has been done in modern times, to methodize the 
common law, and give it a systematic character, so that we may not 
only arrive at its principles by regular analysis, but teach its elements 
and distinction by an enlarged synthesis, yet it is not to be imagined 
that the profession have to encounter less labor, or to exercise less diligence 
than formerly, in order to obtain a mastery of the science; or that there 
is little uncertainty in applying it to the solution of those questions 
which perpetually arise in human transactions. To a certain extent 
law must forever be subject to uncertainty and doubt, not from the 
obscurity and fluctuation of decisions, as the vulgar erroneously suppose, 
but from the endless complexity and variety of human actions. However, 
certain may be the rules of the statute or common law, they must nec¬ 
essarily be general in their language and incapable of a minute and 
perfect application to the boundless circumstances of life, which may 
modify, limit or affect them. It is impossible to provide by any code 
however extensive, for the infinite variety of distinctions, as to civil 
justice, arising from the imperfection of human language and foresight, 
from the conflict of opposing rights, from the effect of real or apparent 
hardships, and from those minute equities, which are often found in different 
scales, adding somewhat to the weight of each, but rarely forming an 
exact equipoise. Until human actions are capable of being limited on 
every side to a definite range of circumstances, the permutations and 
combinations of which may be perfectly ascertained and enumerated; 
until there shall be an entire separation of right from wrong in all the 
business of life, and the elements of each shall be immiscible and re¬ 
pulsive; until, in short, we shall become absolutely pure and perfect in our 
actions, and perfectly conusant of all the operations of the past, the 
present, and the future; there will remain immeasurable uncertainties in 
the law, which will call for the exercise of professional tale^its, and the 
grave judgments of courts of justice. We must be content, since we 
cannot hope to realize these Utopian dreams of human excellence to 
secure the upright and enlightened administration of justice, by encourag¬ 
ing learned advocates to fit themselves for eminence at the bar, and by 
supporting with liberal salaries the dignity, the virtue, and the independ¬ 
ence of the bench.”— Mr. Justice Story, — Miscellaneous Writings, 226. 



WILLIAM A. BEACH (1810-1884), New York 


EVIDENCE OP MARRIAGE 

“Evidence of marriage! What is evidence of marriage? Why, living 
together, may it please your honor. Cohabiting together, may it please 
your honor. Introducing each other as husband and wife,- and raising 
up children together, may it please your honor! For all these relations 
they were married! Aye! for that going down into the very valley and 
shadow of death, which a woman assumes in such relations, they were 
married! They were married when he enjoyed the bloom of her youth 
and her heart’s loving tenderness, married, when it flattered his vanity 
to enjoy her beauty. But when we come to that other time, when of 
all times marriage is most sacred, when they should be leading each other 
down the western slope of life’s steep hillside to rest together at the foot 
in long repose, then it is that this demon of humanity seeks to cast her off! 
And jeopardize her womanhood! Bastardize her children! 

— The above was an outburst in the Brinkley Divorce case. 

“He was great before a jury; greater in an appellate court; but greatest 
when all the duties of a trial lawyer were suddenly thrust upon him. 
He commanded rather than persuaded,” —Albany Law Journal, 1875. 

THE DESTROYER OF ANOTHER’S HOME 

“Talk about the unfriendliness and the hate of Theodore Tilton toward 
Henry Ward Beecher, the chosen and invited guest of his friend’s house, 
who was directed there by the husband in times of his absence, the 
glory of his presence being the light of that household, if it be true that 
Henry Ward Beecher debauched its mistress and stained his hearthstone 
with the violence of his lust, v/hy, is there a husband or a father on earth 
who will wonder that Theodore Tilton should feel indignation? ‘Oh!’ 
says my friend, ‘this suit is for revenge.’ No! Not all that you can do, 
not all that the broad jurisdiction of this court can do, will satisfy the 
longings of that revenge. It is an imperishable feeling, and will be an 
unsatisfied feeling so long as the tempter and the seducer of the wife 
breathes the same air with the living husband. I do not seek to convince 
you, gentlemen, that Theodore Tilton has not the feelings of a man, 
and the resentment and passion of a man; but with all this infirmity, 
this resistless temptation, he yet, strengthened by his love for his wife 
and his children, and upheld by the grace of his God and the belief in 
His name, has withheld and stayed his hand so long as mortal heart could 
bear and hold back the arm destined to work out justice and truth.” 
—From speech for plaintiff in Tilton v. Beecher, for damages. For 
Benj. F. Tracy's speech for defendant, Beecher, see Benj. F. Tracy. 

DESCRIPTION OP BEACH—ALBANY LAW JOURNAL, 1875 

“We have for many years believed that as a mere declaimer, Mr. 
Beach stands not only at the head of the American bar, but at the head 
of all American orators. His oratorical style is well-nigh perfection. 
A presence of rare manly beauty and dignity, a voice of great power and 
sweetness, a vocabulary singularly affluent and sonorous, an unquenchable 
enthusiasm, and a masculine nobility and vigor of thought, make him a 
great master of oratory. In regard to his elocution, Mr. Beach has but 
a single defect, his gestures are constrained, awkward and violent. As 
a forensic rhetorician, we think he is too level, and that his level is too 

f 


44 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


high. He would gain in effect by having more conversational and familiar 
passages. The thunder is grand, but we don’t want always to hear it. 
He commands rather than persuades; and men sometimes set their faces 
against such advocacy. As an advocate, Mr. Beach suffers from a lack 
of two gifts, humor and power of illustration, very important defects 
in an advocate. In his conduct of a case he is remarkably self-possessed, 
fertile and courageous, but lacks tact and knowledge of human nature. 
We think, too, from a pretty intimate knowledge of him, that his culture 
is by no means so broad as that of Evarts or Porter. He is not a man of 
many books, except law books. Still he is not by any means a genius; 
he is simply a man of the highest of legal talents.” 

EVARTS, PORTER AND BEACH 
“Mr. Beach fills us with admiration of the advocate, Mr. Porter 
makes us in love with his cause; Mr. Beach lifts us up, Mr. Porter carries 
us away; when we listen to the one we are afraid we shall yield without 
knowing it. Evarts, Porter, Beach, combined would make the ideal 
advocate. If we are indicted, we shall retain Evarts as general manager, 
Porter to sum up to the jury, and Beach to argue the appeal, if we happen 
to be convicted.” — The Albany Law Journal, during the Beecher Trial. 

TWO YEARS’ STUDY OF THREE BOOKS 
He earned his law library and a splendid vocabulary from hiring out 
to his father, a well-to-do tradesman, to do for a year or two as his father 
wanted him to do. The parent, accordingly furnished him a Bible, a 
copy of Shakespeare, and Bunyan’s Pilgrims’ Progress, which were to 
be read three times thoroughly, and notes made on them. He sent him 
to live with a farmer some twenty miles away. The young man became 
charmed by them and mastered these three books. 


THE NEREIDE 

“The Nereide was named, governed and conducted by belligerents, 
with her force or her conduct the neutral shippers had no concern; they 
deposited their goods on board the vessel, and stipulated for their direct 
transportation to Buenos Aires, It is true, that on her passage she 
had a right to defend herself, and might have a violation of the charter 
party and of her duty. With a pencil dipped in the most vivid colors, 
and guided by the hand of a master, a splendid portr^ait has been drawn, 
exhibiting this vessel and her freighter as forming a single figure, com¬ 
posed of the most discordant materials, of Peace and War. So exquisite 
was the skill of the artist, so dazzling the garb in which the figure was 
presented, that it required the exercise of that cold, investigating faculty, 
which ought always to belong to those who sit on this bench, to discover 
its only imperfection,—its want of resemblance. The Nereide has not 
that Centaur-like appearance which has been ascribed to her. She does 
not rove over the ocean hurling the thunders of war while sheltered 
by the olive-branch of peace. She is not composed in part of the neutral 
character of Mr. Pinto, and in part of the hostile character of the owner. 
She is an open and declared belligerent; claiming all the rights and 
subject to all the dangers of the belligerent character. She conveys 
neutral property which does not engage in her warlike equipments, or in 
any employment she may make of them; which is put on board solely 
for the purpose of transportation, and which encounters the hazard 
* * *of being taken into port, and obliged to seek another conveyance, 
should its carrier be captured. In this, it is the opinion of the majority 
of the Court, there is nothing unlawful. The characters of the vessel and 
cargo remain as distinct in this as in any other case.” 

— William Pinkney in U. S. Supreme Court, 1815, in the case of 
the Nereide, 9 Cranch, 389. 



JUDAH P. Bi^NJAMIN (1811-1884), Lousiana 

LEFT NO POSTHUMOUS LETTERS 

“Even if I had health, and desired ever so much to help you in your 
work, I have no materials available for the purpose. I have never kept 
a diary, or retained a copy of a letter written to me. No letters addressed 
to me by others will be found among my papers when I die. With, 
perhaps, the exception of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, no one has many letters 
of mine; for I have read so many American biographies which reflected 
only the passions and prejudices of their writers, that I do not leave 
behind me letters and documents to be used in such a work about myself.” 
—From a letter to his biographer, Pierce Butler. 

TEST OF A MAN 

“I know no better test of a man than his possession of the affection of 
those most intimate with him.”— From a letter to his daughter, Minette, 
about to marry Capt. Bouisignac. 

IT IS TRUE I AM A JEW 

“It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving 
their Ten Commandments from the immediate hand of Deity, amidst 
the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, the ancestors of the distinguished 
gentleman, who is opposed to me, were herding' swine in the forests of 
Scandinavia.”— Benjamin's retort to a Gentile who called him a Jew. 

HIS RULE AS TO FEES 

“First, I charge a retainer; then I charge a reminder; next I charge a 
refresher; and then I charge a flnisher.” 

POOR WHEN HE LANDED IN ENGLAND, TO WHICH HE FLED 
AFTER THE REBELLION 

“I was very poor when I landed here (England), and had barely 
enough to support my family for a few months. I have been lucky 
enough to receive, however, a hundred bales of cotton that have escaped 
Yankee vigilance, and the price here is so high that it has given me 
nearly $20,000 by means of information furnished by a kind friend in 
relation to the affairs of a financial institution in which I invested my 
little fortune and which has already increased in market value 50%. 
So you see I am not quite a beggar.”— Benjamin's letter to Jas. A. Bayard, 
Oct. 20, 1865. 

In 6 Jas. Schouler’s U. S. History, p. 89, he says: “Contemporaries 
had said at the outset that Toombs was ‘The Brains of the Confederacy;’ 
but that title, as events developed, belongs rather to Attorney-General 
Benjamin, the ablest, most versatile, and most constant of all Davis’s 
civil counsellors, as he acted as Secretary of War, after Walker’s retire¬ 
ment in March, 1862, to remain to the bitter end, sanguine, serene in 
bearing, thru all mutations of fortune and misfortune.” 

Mr. Justice Field, once said to J. S. Black: “You had better look to 
your laurels, for that little Jew from New Orleans, has stated your case 
out of Court.” 

It is said the business of Benjamin and Micau, in the law business, in 
New Orleans, amounted in 1854 to $75,000 a year; and in 1880, Benja- 


46 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


min’s income at the London Bar, was $79,880, and for the sixteen years, 
including 1880, something more than $700,000. 

He wrote, while waiting for a practice in London, that immortal work, 
“Benjamin on Sales.” 

—See Benjamin's opinion as to the dual-system of Barristers and 
Solicitors, in England and the U. S., under Sir Richard Webster. 

SENATOR VEST’S TRIBUTE 

“Senator of two Republics, and leader of the bar of two nations.” 
FAREWELL TO THE UNION 

“And now to you, Mr. President, and to my brother Senators, on all 
sides of this chamber, I bid a respectful farewell; with many of them whom 
I have been radically separated in political sentiment, my personal 
relations have been kindly, and have inspired me with a respect and 
esteem that I shall not willingly forget; with those around me from the 
Southern States I part as men part from brothers on the eve of a temporary 
absence, with a cordial pressure of the hand and a smiling assurance of 
the speedy renewal of sweet intercourse around the family hearth. But 
to you, noble and generous friends, who, born beneath other skies, possess 
hearts that beat in sympathy with ours; to you who solicited and assailed 
by motives the most powerful that could appeal to selfish natures, have 
nobly spurned them all; to you, who, in our behalf, have bared your 
breasts to the fierce beatings of the storm, and made willing sacrifice of 
life’s most glittering prizes in your devotion to constitutional liberty; 
to you, who have made our cause your cause, and from many of whom I 
feel I part forever, what shall I, can I say? Naught, I know and feel, 
is needed for myself; but this I shall say for the people in whose name I 
speak today; whether prosperous or adverse fortunes await you, one 
priceless treasure is yours, the assurance that an entire people honor 
your names, and hold them in grateful and affectionate memory. But 
with still a sweeter and more touching return shall your unselfish devotion 
be rewarded. When, in after days, the story of the present shall be written 
when history shall have passed her stern sentence on the erring men 
who have driven their unoffending brethren from the shelter of their 
common home, your names will derive fresh lustre from the contrast; 
and when your children hear repeated the familiar tale it will be with 
glowing cheek and kindling eye; their very souls will stand a-tiptoe as 
their sires are named, and they will glory in their lineage from men of 
spirit as generous and of patriotism as high-hearted as ever illustrated 
or adorned the American Senate,”— From Speech on Leaving the United 
States Senate in 1861. 

HIS BRIEF ARGUMENTS 

“Mr. Benjamin frequently argued before the Supreme Court, and he 
very seldom spoke more than twenty minutes. Sometimes his argument 
consisted merely of a lucid statement of the point, which he conceived 
to be at issue.”— Benjamin R. Curtis. 

AS CONFEDERATE SECRETARY OF STATE 

“I was brought into close relation with Mr. Benjamin, occupied the 
adjoining room to his, and shared his confidence and friendship to an 
unusual extent. This enables me not only to estimate him as a public 
official, but to weigh and appreciate his many personal gifts and admir¬ 
able qualities. His studies and training especially fitted him for such a 
position. He had a thorough acquaintance with history, with both the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


47 


common and civil law, with international law and modern precedents, 
with the classics, ancient and modern; the French language and modern 
literature; and with the commerce, institutions, and political conditions 
of foreign states. He was, indeed, a citizen of Louisiana, but yet far 
more a cosmopolitan. A man of society, his tact in personal intercourse 
was unfailing, his politeness invariable. In all the trials and anxieties 
of the great strugle, I never saw his temper ruffled or embittered. His 
opinions were generally decided but courteously expressed, even when he 
differed most widely from others. In his most unguarded moments, 
I cannot recall that he ever uttered an oath or a violent expression. He 
was ever calm, self-poised and master of all his resources. His grasp 
of a subject seemed instantaneous; his mind appeared to move without 
friction. His thought was clear. His style, whether in composition or 
conversation, was natural, orderly, and perspicuous. I do not affirm 
that his compositions were wholly unstudied, but, whatever art there 
was, he had the art to hide. I have known him often to compose a long 
despatch or state paper with great rapidity, with hardly a word changed 
or interlined in the whole manuscript.”— Chief Clerk of the State Depart¬ 
ment of the Confederacy. 

HIS CAREER AS A LONDON LAWYER 

“When he first settled in London he practiced in all the courts, and 
made many masterly addresses to juries; but in the very peculiar and diffi¬ 
cult art of examining and cross-examining witnesses and managing a case 
at nisi prius, he did not shine. This requires a special experience with the 
peculiar class of jurymen who are to be influenced. * * * 

arguments before the court which depended on the scientific treatment 
of legal questions, his superiority became early established. After a 
few years he confined himself to these. Anson v. N. W. Ry., was his 
last case at nisi prius. . Thenceforward he restricted himself to the court 
in banc or Courts of Appeal, but was likewise often taken into chancery 
to argue before an equity judge. Still later, feehng the absolute necessity 
of restricting his exertions, he refused to go into any court other than 
the House of Lords, and the Privy Council, except for a fee of $500, 
and a client having demanded a consultation at his own house (the 
client’s) the fee was $1,500. The Privy Council was, perhaps, his favorite 
tribunal; his wide acquaintance with foreign systems of law qualified 
him in an eminent degree to deal with the cases from the colonies and 
dependencies of Great Britain which came before the Judicial Committee 
in Downing Street. His great faculty was that of argumentative state¬ 
ment. He would so put his case, without in the least departing from 
candor, that it seemed impossible to give judgment except in one way. 
It must be confessed that this is a dangerous power, and sometimes 
imposed on himself. His ‘opinions’ were, in consequence, sometimes 
unduly sanguine, or at least, seemed so in cases which he had not the 
opportunity of arguing himself. When he did argue he often justified 
by his advocacy that which had seemed the hardest. The Franconia was, 
perhaps, the best known of his cases. It dealt to some extent, with inter¬ 
national law, in which, having been not only a lawyer but a statesman, 
he was at home; but it was a criminal case, and so of a class with which 
he was not usually concerned. More characteristic examples will be 
revealed by a glance at the columns of the Times between 1872 and 1883, 
or by dipping into the pages of the ‘Appeal Cases.’ Here we find him 
arguing questions about bills of exchange, a husband’s liability for his 
wife’s debts (Debenham v. Mellon), the duties of the charterer of a ship, 
the explicit rights of the Caledonian and North British Railways under 
their acts, the re-opening of accounts closed in New Zealand nine years 
before, the perjury of Thomas Castro, otherwise Arthur Orton, otherwise 
Sir Roger Tichborne, etc.”— The Times, May 9, 188^; Butler's Life, ^01-2. 


48 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


SKILL IN HANDLING WITNESSES 

Contrary to the above, Baron Pollock, gives several anecdotes, to 
illustrate his skill in handling witnesses, remarking: “Although not elo¬ 
quent as a speaker, he always showed great experience in the conduct 
of a nisi prius issue, and thoroughly knew the rules of the game; clear 
in the statement of the facts, an effective cross-examiner, and cautious 
in the extreme of expressing any false or figurative surroundings, he 
presented his client’s case with great force to the jury.” 

—Green Bag, Sept. 1898, JfOO. 

HIS LONDON INCOME 

“Within five years after arriving in London, after the collapse of the 
Confederacy, at the age of 55, his practice was $10,000 a year. His 
income in 1880, reached $79,860. He built a house in Paris, which with 
the furnishings, cost him $80,000; and when he lived in Louisiana he 
had to give up his sugar plantation, ‘Bellechasse,’ because he had to 
pay $60,000 for indorsing a friend’s note. He made three fortunes. 
Began as a penniless lawyer’s clerk in New Orleans.” 

— Butler's Life of Benjamin, Ji.18-20. 

WAS NEVER IN A HURRY 

“Mr. Benjamin was never in a hurry; never important with this big 
thing and that big thing, never pretentious, always the same calm, 
equable, diligent, affable man, getting through an enormous mass of 
work, day by day, without ostentation and without friction.” 

— Butler's Life of Benjamin, Jf.23. 

HIS TREATISE ON SALES 

“I hope in Nov., or Dec., next (1867) to have my ‘Treatise on Sales’ 
ready for publication. It will bring me into more prominence with the 
profession, and, perhaps, secure a more rapid advance in getting business.” 

—Benjamin wrote Mrs. Kruttschnitt, April 11, 1867. 

“The book went through three editions before his death, and became 
a classic on both sides of the Atlantic as ‘Benjamin on Sales.’ The 
selection of the subject in itself shows acuteness of judgment, for this 
extremely difficult question had not been adequately discussed; and its 
treatment involving, as the preface explained, ‘an attempt to develop 
the principles applicable to all branches of the subject,’ there was wide 
scope not only for the accumulations of varied learning and experience, 
incident to such a life as Benjamin’s had been, but for the display of 
that power of comprehension, of logical and perspicuous development 
of first principles for which he was remarkable, though the English 
public had yet seen but little of it in him. It was this intellectual power, 
the clear perception of essential rules in their practical application, that 
won for the book its immediate popularity with the legal profession, 
and we may add, has preserved that high standing. Soon after its publica¬ 
tion, Baron Martin, when taking his seat upon the bench, one morning, 
asked to have Mr. Benjamin’s work handed to him. ‘Never heard of it, 
my Lord,’ was the answer of the chief clerk. ‘Never heard of it!’ ejaculat¬ 
ed Sir Samuel Martin; ‘mind that I never take my seat here again with¬ 
out that book by my side.’ ”— Pierce Bulter's Life of Benjamin, 392-3. 


JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832), England 

NO SECURITY WITHOUT LAW 

“Law, alone, has accomplished what all the natural feelings were not 
able to do; law, alone, has been able to create a fixed and duraWe position, 
which deserves the name of property. The law, alone, could accustom 
men to submit to the yoke of foresight at first painful to be borne, but, 
afterwards agreeable and mild. It, alone, could encourage them in labor, 
superfious at present, and which they are not to enjoy till the future. 
Economy has as many enemies as there are spendthrifts, or men who 
would enjoy without taking the trouble to produce. Labor is too painful 
for idleness; it is too slow for impatience. Cunning and injustice under- 
handedly conspire to appropriate its fruits; insolence and audacity plot 
to seize them by open force. Hence, Society, always tottering, always 
threatened, never at rest, lives in the midst of snares. It requires, in 
the legislator, vigilance continually sustained, and power always in action, 
to defend it against his constantly reviving crowd of adversaries. 

“The law does not say to a man. ‘Work, and I will reward you;’ 
but it says to him, ‘Work, and by stopping the hand that would take 
them from you, I will insure to you the fruits of your labor, its natural 
and sufficient reward, which, without me, you could not preserve.’ 
If industry creates, it is the law which preserves; if, at the first moment, 
we owe everything to labor, at the second, and every succeeding moment, 
we owe everything to law.’ 

“In order to force a clear idea of the whole extent which ought to be 
given to the principle of security, it is necessary to consider, that man 
is not like the brutes, limited to the present time, either in enjoyment 
or suffering; but that he is susceptible of pleasure and pain by anticipa¬ 
tion, and that it is not enough to guard him against actual loss, but 
also to guarantee to him, as much as possible, his possessions against 
future losses. The idea of his security must be prolonged to him through¬ 
out the whole vista that his imagination can measure. 

“The disposition to look forward, which has so marked an influence 
upon the condition of man, may be called expectation, expectation of 
the future. It is by means of this that the successful moments which 
compose the duration of fife are not like isolated and independent points, 
but become parts of a continuous whole. Expectation is a chain which 
united our present and our future existence, and passes beyond ourselves 
to the generations which follow us. The sensibility of the individual is 
prolonged through all the links of this chain. The principle of security 
comprehends the maintenance of all these hopes; it directs that events, 
inasmuch as they are dependent upon the laws, should be conformed to 
the expectations to which the laws have given birth.” 

—^Principles of the Civil Codef 

Bentham was one of the most productive and influential of English 
writers on pohtics and jurisprudence. 

“I do not know a single law reform effected since Bentham’s day which 
cannot be traced to his influence; but a still more striking proof of the clear¬ 
ing of the brain produced by this system (The system of Hobbes, 
Bentham and Austin), even in the earlier stage, may be found in Hobbes. 
In his ‘Dialogue of the Common Laws,’ he argues for a fusion of law and 
equity, a registration of titles to land, and a systematic penal code, 
three measures which we are on the eve of seeing carried out at this 
moment.”— Sir Henry Mainei n his 'Early History of Institutions.' 


50 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE BAR OF PENNSYLVANIA 

“In the beginning we must not forget that Philadelphia was the capi- 
tol of the whole country. In provincial times it was the greatest of the 
Colonial cities. The first lawyers we ever had were bred in the Temple, 
and came across the seas to establish themselves here. They had walked 
in those ways trodden by Lamb. Like him, they too had known a 
Thomas Coventry whose gait was peremptory and path-keeping— 
whose step was massive and elephantine, and they had seen Lord Hard- 
wicke and Northington, and Ryder, Wiles and Macclesfield and Wilmot 
and Camden and Mansfield, and they had heard the great leaders of 
those days and learned their lessons at their feet and they had brought 
with them the knowledge of principle and practice from Westminster 
Hall, and hence it was in the beginning we started right, with a solid 
foundation of professional character and duty. Here the government of 
the U. S. first saw the light of day, and here all the great questions of 
constitutional law were first discussed and considered, and these questions 
were handled by such men as Jared Ingersoll, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Tilghman, 
Mr. Rawle, and Mr. Dallas. Those were the men that gave name and 
fame to our Bar. Heaven sent may we never lose it! They established 
a standard by which we have been obliged to live. How delightfully 
Mr. Bunyde describes these gentlemen, and the history of their career. 
Can I say more of these men or their works than is said by Lord Mans¬ 
field himself in a letter to Chief Justice McKean, in which he acknowl¬ 
edges the receipt of Dallas’ Reports, in these words: 

“ ‘Sir: I am not able to write with my own hand and must, therefore, 
beg leave to use another to acknowledge the honor you have done me, 
by your most obliging and elegant letter, and the sending me Dallas’ 
Reports. I am not able to read myself, but I have heard them read with 
much pleasure. They do credit to the Court, the Bar and the Reporter; 
they show readiness in practice, liberality in principle, strong reason 
and legal learning; the method, too, is clear, and the language plain. 
I undergo the weight of age and other bodily infirmities, but blessed be 
God 1 my mind is cheerful, and still open to that sensibility which praise 
from the praiseworthy never fails to give Laus landariate. Accept thanks 
of, sir, your most obliged and obedient humble servant.’ ” 

—By Benj. II. Brewster. 


JAS. T. BRADY GRASPED LAW, AND FACTS, DURING TRIAL 

Says Luther R. Marsh: “I had a case some years ago of such im¬ 
portance to property and character, that I deemed it advisable to call 
in Mr. Brady to share the responsibility. But so crowded and imperative 
were his engagements, that I found it impracticable to meet him in con¬ 
sultation—all our appointments fell through. Nevertheless, I sent him 
notice of the time the court had assigned for the arguments, and he was 
promptly there; though wholly uninformed of the facts or position 
of the case, I was glad for the magnetism of his presence, though antici¬ 
pating but little actual support from his reply. Purposely opening 
very fully—more for him than the court—I observed him rapidly taking 
notes; and when I had concluded, he attached and folded his sheets and 
handed them to me. I found on perusing them, that he had grasped 
the whole case—comprehending every question involved in it, adding 
additional points of great weight and importance, which he had prepared 
on the occasion. Then after the opposing argument, followed his reply— 
so complete, so well arranged, so powerful, that it would have been re¬ 
markable under any state of preparation, but most extraordinary as 
a spontaneous production.”— L. B. Proctor, in 'Bench and Bar of New 
York,’ article, Jas. T. Brady, 272. 



THOMAS H. BENTON (1782-1858), Missouri 

ANDREW JACKSON 

“Historically, then, shall I view him; and limiting this view to his 
civil administration, I demand, where is there a chief magistrate of whom 
so much evil has been predicted and from whom so much good has come ? 
Never has any man entered upon the chief magistry of a country under 
such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! Never has anyone been so 
pursued with direful prognostications, never has anyone been so beset 
and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed con¬ 
federates, never has anyone in any country where the administration of 
justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring been so lawlessly and 
shamelessly tried and condemned by rival enemies, without hearing, 
without defense, without the forms of law and justice! History has been 
ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate 
him by comparison. Language has been tortured to find epithets suffici¬ 
ently strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been exhausted 
in her efforts to deck him with revolting and inhuman attributes. Tyrant, 
despot, usurper, destroyer of the liberties of his country; rash, ignorant, 
imbecile; endangering the public peace with all foreign nations; destroy¬ 
ing domestic prosperity at home; ruining all industry, all commerce, 
all manufactures; annihilating confidence between man and man; deliver¬ 
ing up the streets of populous cities to grass and weeds, and the wharves 
of commercial towns to the encumbrance of decaying vessels; depriving 
labor of all reward; depriving industry of all employment; destroying 
the currency; plunging an innocent and happy people from the summit 
of felicity to the depths of misery, want, and despair. Such is the faint 
outline, followed by actual condemnation, of the appalling denuncia¬ 
tions daily uttered against this one man, from the moment he became 
an object of political competition, down to the concluding moment of 
his political existence. 

“The sacred voice of inspiration has told us that there is a time for 
all things. There certainly has been a time for every evil that human 
nature admits of to be vaticinated of President Jackson’s administration; 
equally certain the time has now come for all rational and well-disposed 
people to compare the predictions with the facts, and to ask themselves 
if these calamitous prognostications have been verified by events? 
Have we peace or war with foreign nations. Certainly we have peace 
with all the world, peace with all its benign, and felicitous influences! 
Are we respected, or despised abroad? Certainly the American name 
never was more honored throughout the four quarters of the globe than 
in this very moment. Do we hear of indignity or outrage in any quarter; 
of merchants robbed in foreign ports, of vessels searched on the high seas, 
of American citizens impressed into foreign service, of the national flag 
insulted anywhere? On the contrary, we see former wrongs repaired, 
no new one inflicted. France pays twenty-five millions of francs for 
spoliation committed thirty years ago; Naples pays two millions one 
hundred thousand ducats for wrongs of the same date; Denmark pays 
six hundred and fifty thousand rix-dollars for wrongs done a quarter of 
a century ago; Spain engages to pay twelve millions of reals vellon for 
injuries of fifteen years’ date; Portugal, the least in the list of former 
aggressors, admits her liability and only waits the adjustment of details 
to close her account by adequate indemnity.” 

NATHAN DANE 

“He (Webster) has brought, before us a certain Nathan Dane, of 
Beverly, Massachusetts, and loaded him with such an exuberance of 


52 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


blushing honors as no modern name has been known to merit or to 
claim. Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa Pompilius are the renowned legisla¬ 
tors of antiquity to whom he is compared, and only compared for the 
purpose of being placed at their head. So much glory was earned by a 
single act, and that act, the supposed authorship of the ordinance of 
1787, for the government of the Northwestern Territory, and especially 
of the clause in it which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. 
(After reciting the history of the ordinance to show that Dane was not 
its author.) * * * 

“So passes away the glory of this world. But yesterday the name of 
Nathan Dane, of Beverly, Massachusetts, hung in equipoise against 
half the names of the sages of Greece and Rome. Poetry and eloquence 
were at work to blazon Ms fame; marble and brass and history and song 
were waiting to perform their office. The celestial honors of the apotheosis 
seemed to be only deferred for the melancholy event of the sepulchre. 
Today all this superstructure of honors, human and divine, disappears 
from the earth. The foundation of the edifice is sapped; and the super¬ 
human glories of him who, twenty-four hours ago, was taking his station 
among the demigods of antiquity, have dispersed and dissipated into 
thin air—vanished like the baseless fabric of a vision which leaves not 
a rack behind.” 

—Reply to extravagant praise of Dane, by Webster in U. S. Senate, 

1829. 

OREGON 

“It is valuable, both as a country to be inhabited and as a position to 
be held and defended. I speak of it, first, as a position commanding 
the North Pacific Ocean and overlooking the eastern coast of Asia. 
The North Pacific is a rich sea, and is already the seat of a great commerce; 
British, French, American, Russian, and ships of other nations, frequent 
it. Our whaling-ships cover it; our ships-of-war go there to protect 
our interest, and, great as that interest now is, it is only the beginning. 
Futurity will develop an immense, and various, commerce on that sea, 
of which in the merchant-ships which carry it on, nor the military ma¬ 
rine which protects it, can find a port to call its own within 20,000 miles 
of the field of its operations. The double length of the two Americas 
has to be run, a stormy and tempestuous cape to be doubled, to find 
itself in a port of its own country; while here lies one in the very edge of 
its field, ours by right, ready for use, and ample for every purpose of refuge 
and repair, protection and domination. Can we turn our back upon it, 
and, in turning the back, deliver it up to the British? Insane and suici¬ 
dal would be the fatal act! 

* * * “The trade of the East has always been the richest jewel 

in the diadem of commerce. All nations, in all ages, have sought it; 
and those which obtained it, or even a share of it, attained the highest 
degree of opulence, refinement, and power. The routes through which 
it flows fertilized deserts, and built up cities and kingdoms amidst the 
desolation of rocks and sands. Phoenicia, Egypt, Persia were among the 
ancient thoroughfares of this commerce; Constantinople and Alexandria 
among its modern channels; and Vemce and Genoa in the South, and 
Bruges and Antwerp in the North, the means of its distribution over 
Europe. All grew rich and powerful upon it; and with wealth and power 
came civilization and refinement. The Cape of Good Hope became the 
recent route, with wealth to its discoverers, the Portuguese, and to all 
their rivals and followers, the Dutch, English, French, and others.” 

—From Speech in U. S. Senate, on ‘the Oregon Settlement,' 1847. 

Benton had studied the Oregon question for 25 years. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


53 


REPLY TO McDuffie on annexation of TEXAS 

“The Senator from South Carolina complains that I have been arrogant 
and overbearing in this debate, and dictatorial to those who were opposed 
to me. So far as this reproach is founded, I have to regret it, and to 
ask pardon of the Senate and of its members. I may be in some fault. 
I have, indeed, been laboring under deep feeling; and while much was 
kept down, something may have escaped. I marked the commence¬ 
ment of this Texas movement long before it was visible to the public 
eye; and always felt it to be dangerous, because it gave the plotters the 
honest sympathies of the millions. I saw men who never cared a straw 
about Texas, one of whom gave it away (Calhoun, in Monroe’s Cabinet), 
another of whom voted against saving it (Tyler, on Clay’s resolutions, 
in 1820), and all of whom were silent and indifferent while the true 
friends of the sacrificed country were laboring to get it back. I saw 
these men lay their plot in the winter of 1842-43, and told every person 
with whom I talked, every step they were to take in it. All that has 
taken place, I foretold; all that is intended, I foresaw. The intrigue for 
the presidency was the first act in the drama; the dissolution of the 
Union, the second. And I, who hate intrigue and love the Union, can 
only speak of intriguers and disunionists with warmth' and indignation. 
The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, I must be allowed to speak 
in just terms of the criminal politicians who prostituted the question of 
its recovery to their own base purposes, and delayed its success by de¬ 
grading and disgracing it. 

“The Senator from South Carolina compares the rejected treaty to 
the slain Caesar, and gives it a ghost, which is to meet me at some future 
day, as the spectre met Brutus at Philippi. I accept the comparison, 
and thank the Senator for it. It is both classic and just; for as Caesar 
was slain for the good of his country, so has been this treaty; and as the 
spectre appeared at Philippi on the side of the ambitious Anthony and the 
hypocrite Octavius, and against the patriot Brutus, so would the ghost 
of this poor treaty, when it comes to meet me, appear on the side of the 
President and his Secretary, and against the man who was struggling 
to save his country from their lawless designs. But here the comparison 
must stop; for I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight 
goes against me at this new Philippi with which I am threatened, and 
the enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies 
of Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall 
upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run it through 
my own body; but shall save it, and save myself for another day, and 
for another use, for the day when the battle of the disunion of these 
States is to be fought, not with words, but with iron, and for the hearts 
of the traitors who appear in arms against their country .”—From speech in 
U. S. Senate, 18^.^. 

GRAND DESIGN OF COLUMBUS 

“Let us rise to the grandeur of the occasion. Let us complete the grand 
design of Columbus by putting Europe and Asia into communication, 
and that to our advantage, thru the heart of our country. Let us give 
to his ships, converted into cars, a continued course unknown to all 
former times. Let us make the iron road, and make it from sea to sea. 
States and individuals making it East of the Mississippi, the nation 
making it West. Let us now in this convention rise above everything 
sectional, personal, local. Let us beseech the National Legislature to 
build the great road upon the great national line which unites Europe 
and Asia, San Francisco at one end, St. Louis in the middle, the national 


54 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


metropolis and great commercial emporium at the other; and which 
shall be adorned with the crowning honor — the colossal statue of the 
great Columbus, whose design it accomplishes, known from a granite mass 
of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, overlooking the road — the mountain 
itself a pedestal, and the statue a part of the mountain, pointing with 
outstretched arm to the western horizon, and saying to the flying passen¬ 
gers, ‘There’s the East, there is India.’ ” 

—Speech made in St. Louis, Mo., in ISJflf., at the St. Louis, Pacific 
R. R. Convention. 

Benton was born at Hillsborough, N. C., 1782, and died in St. Louis, 
Mo., in 1858. He moved to Nashville, Tenn., 1799, where he practiced 
law, fought a duel with Andrew Jackson; moved to St. Louis, Mo., 1815; 
started a newspaper, in the conduct of which he became involved in 
several duels. 

Was elected to the U. S. Senate, upon admission of the State of Missouri 
into the Union, in 1820, and continued in that office 30 years. 

Says Geo. G. Vest: “I heard Benton in 1856, when candidate for 
Governor of Missouri, declare emphatically in a public address that if he 
had been President in 1828, instead of threatening to hang Calhoun, he 
would have hanged him on the eastern exposure of the Capitol, and ap¬ 
pealed to the people of the U. S., to 'vindicate his action.” 

— Wm. M. Meigs' Life of Benton, 508. 

Says W. V. N. Bay, in his Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of 
Missouri, pp. 3-4: 

“That he (Benton) was inferior to Webster as a close, logical reasoner; 
that he was not the equal of Clay as an orator; and that Calhoun surpassed 
him in the power and condensation of language, all must admit. But 
in depth of mind, originality of thought, and the power to conceive and 
execute any great measure of public welfare, he was the equal of either, 
and, in some respects, the superior of all; for'the dominant character¬ 
istics of all were, to a great extent, combined in him.” 

BENTON NUGGETS 

Douglas. “Douglas never can be President, sir, no sir. Douglas 
can never be President, sir. His legs are too short, sir. His coat like a 
cow’s tail, hangs too near the ground, sir.”— Said in 181^0. 

Danger, “Neither nations nor individuals ever escaped danger 
by fearing it. They must face it and defy it.” 

—In one of his Oregon speeches. 

Quarrel. “I never quarrel, sir, but I sometimes fight, sir, and when¬ 
ever I fight, sir, a funeral follows, sir.”— To an opposing Senator. 

Squatter Sovereignty. “Oh, squatter sovereignty. Where were you 
then? * * * Well do I remember the day when it was first shown 

in the Senate. * * * 1848, and it was received as non¬ 

sense, as the essence of nonsense, as the quintessence of nonsense, as 
the five-times distilled essence of political nonsensicality. ” 

St. Louis. “St. Louis is yet to find herself as near Canton as she 
is to London, with a better and safer route by land and sea to China 
and Japan, than she now has to France and Great Britian.” 

Calhoun. “All Calhoun’s views are morbid, the vagaries of a dis¬ 
eased imagination.” 

Kansas City “There, gentlemen, where the rocky bluff meets and 
turns aside the sweeping current of this mighty river; here where the 
Missouri, after running its southward course for nearly 2,000 miles, 
turns eastward to the Mississippi, a large commercial and manufacturing 
community will see a great city on these hills.” (Said while Benton was 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


55 


a guest of the town council of the City of Kansas, (the embryo Kansas 
City), in May 1854,—four years before his death, when the town had 
but 478 inhabitants, in 1855. Twenty years before this, Benton wrote, 
while standing at Randolph, in Clay County, across the river, pointing to 
the bank in the river seven miles towards its source. 

“There is the point which is destined to become the largest city west 
of St. Louis.” 

“What Are The Facts.” “What are the facts? Give us the facts; 
Webster said that he knew more political facts than any other 
man he ever met,—even more than John Quincy Adams,—and pos¬ 
sessed a wonderful fund of general knowledge.*** When a Senator 
made a mistake as to any historical fact or manifested any desire to 
become acquainted with any matter which he did not thoroughly under¬ 
stand, Benton had the custom of calling a boy, sending him to the library 
for a book containing the information, finding the page, and sending it 
to the Senator, with his compliments.”— John Wentworth, of Chicago, 111. 


PUBLIC OPINION INVARIABLY AGAINST THE PRISONER 

“My learned friend, the District Attorney (A. Oakly Hall), and myself, 
do not exactly agree in our notions about men and human nature. He 
said that I ‘spoke rather like a cynic than a philosopher,’ when I declared 
that man would much more readily believe evil of his neighbor than good. 
I retain my opinion. There is an instinct in every human being that 
relates to the purpose for which the Almighty seems to have designed 
him, a roving hunter, ‘to live as the hunter liveth, and to die as the hunter 
dieth.’ No race of mankind is ever satisfied with the peace in which it 
first achieved prosperity. However large, rich and fertile the domain 
possessed, we are ever eager to push out, even in the midst of our luxuries 
and enjoyments, and seek new theatres for physical and intellectual 
effort. When we look back upon history, we find that civilization has 
forced its path over the ruins of empires, and there is not a single fallen 
column, there is not a smouldering cornice, nor a piece of stone round which 
the weeds cluster in desolate places where at one period luxury, refine¬ 
ment and art may have existed, which was not in its overthrow a neces¬ 
sary foothold for that progress, which we think, has advanced us to a 
position so enviable in these latter days.. We are a restless, roving race 
of hunters; and the very moment you give the common multitude an 
object to pursue, the instinct of the chase naturally tends to superiority 
over judgment and humanity. When anything flieth from mankind 
they all pursue; let it turn wfth the courage of a rat, and the multitude 
are likely to fall back. The instinct of our race is developed in the admin¬ 
istration of the law. When a man is charged with what is termed a ‘great 
crime,’ did you ever know the newspapers to suggest that he might pos¬ 
sibly be innocent? Is that because editors are destitute of humanity? 
No, but entirely because of this instinct. If you go into a court of justice 
you will find that in almost every extraordinary ease, the instincts of the 
multitude are with the state. When the prosecution are in want of tes¬ 
timony, any man who, far off in Texas, knows a fact that can assist 
the People, will communicate it to the district attorney; but if you 
were charged with crime, accused, though innocent, arrested and brought 
to trial, men who were present and saw the deed committed by another, 
would often rather suffer you to die guiltless on the scaffold, than come 
forward and confess that they were in the scene of the occurrence, if 
that might expose them to shame or even to trouble.” 

— Jas. T. Brady, in his argument in defense of Huntington, charged 
with forgery, Dec. 29, 1856. 



HORACE BINNEY (1780-1875), Pennsylvania 

U. S. SUPREME COURT—GUARDIAN OF CONSTITUTION 

“What were the States before the Union? The hope of their enemies, 
the fear of their friends, and arrested only by the Constitution from be¬ 
coming the shame of the world. To what will they return when the Union 
shall be dissolved? To no better than that from which the Constitution 
saved them and probably to much worse. They will return to it with 
vastly augmented power and lust of domination in some States, and 
irremediaWe disparity in others, leading to aggression, to war and to 
conquest. They will return to it, not as strangers who have never been 
allied, but as brethren alienated, embittered and irreconcilably hostile. 
In brief time their hands may be red with each other’s blood, and horror 
and shame together may then bury liberty in the same grave with the 
Constitution. The dissolution of the Union will not remedy a single 
evil, and may cause ten thousand. It is the highest imprudence to threat¬ 
en it; it is madness to intend it. If the Union we have cannot endure, 
the dream of the Revolution is over, and we must wake to the certainty 
that a truly free government is too good for mankind.”— From an Eulogy 
on John Marshall, 1835. 

THE SACRED RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE 

“Whoever reads this will by its own light only, and this is all that 
the court have to guide them, must therefore see that there is nothing 
in it like an interdiction of instruction in the principles of the Christian 
religion; and I contend for this the more strenuously, because the trust, 
I confidently believe, must be executed, and I should deprecate it as a 
great public evil, as well as a perversion of the will, to have a doubt 
remain of either the right or the duty of the trustees to give religious 
instruction. * * * exclusion or restriction in the testator’s 

will is illegal, it is for that reason null and absolutely void, and the con¬ 
sequence is not that the charity fails, but that the restraint—the con¬ 
dition—^is defeated, and the court must establish the charity according 
to their sense of the law. It is a condition subsequent to the gift. The 
estate has vested in the trustee, and this restraint or condition is a 
restraint upon its use. If the restraint is illegal, the use is not bound 
by it. The complainants gain nothing by the objection but the unenvi¬ 
able satisfaction of holding up their benefactor to judicial censure, and 
possibly to moral reprehension.” 

— Vidal V. Girard's executors, 2 Howard, 127-183. {The great 
Girard Will case, in which Binney vanquished Daniel Webster, 
in 184^4^.) 

An Index. “I certainly think that the best book in the world would 
owe the most to a good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single 
good thought in it, might be kept alive by it. I have come to regard a 
good book as curtailed of half its value if it has not a pretty full index. 
It is almost impossible without such a guide to reproduce on demand the 
most striking thoughts or facts the book may contain, whether for ci¬ 
tation or further consideration.”— H. Binney. 

Horace Binney. “The head of the American Bar.”— Wm. M. Evarts 
and Chas. Sumner. 

CHARITABLE USES 

“It has been said that the law of England derived the doctrine of 
charitable uses from the Roman Civil Law. Lord Thurlow has said it. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


57 


and there are others who have said the same thing. It is by no means 
clear. It may be very well doubted. It is not worth the time necessary 
for the investigation. One of the worst doctrines, as formerly understood 
in England, the doctrine of Cy pres, has been derived from the Roman 
Law, and perhaps little else. Constantine certainly sanctioned what are 
called pious uses. A successor, Valentinian, restrained donations to the 
poor; and Justinian abolished the restraint, and confirmed and estab¬ 
lished such uses generally and forever.” 

—From Binney's argument in Vidal v. City of Philadelphia, 26 
This was the Girard will case controversy. 


THE GIRARD WILL CASE 

The spring of 1844 was notable in Washington for the argument in 
the famous Vidal v. Philadelphia (2 Howard, 127), involving the will of 
Stephen Girard. The case had been first argued in 1843, by Walter 
Jones agairfst John Sergeant, but owing to the absence of three of the 
judges, it was re-argued in 1844, by Jones and Webster against Horace 
Binney and John Sergeant. When the case was carried to the Supreme 
Court of the U. S., Binney was joined with Sergeant at the latter’s 
request, and Binney went to England to make himself more familiar with 
the law of charitable uses. He returned fully prepared for the encounter. 
He was tall, large, well formed, always well dressed and an Apollo in 
manly beauty. He spoke slowly and distinctly; his voice was full, 
musical and well modulated; his manners a blending of dignity, ease, 
suavity and high refinement. He spoke three days, during which the 
court-room was filled to its utmost capacity by beauty, talent and 
eminence; lawyers of eminent ability were drawn from Richmond, 
Baltimore and New York to listen. Mr. Sergeant was a lawyer of no 
less ability than Mr. Binney; but he has not his fine voice or imposing 
appearance. He spoke two days. Mr. Webster who made the closing 
argument in the ease, had a Herculean task to perform. If any one could 
do it, he could; but it was beyond his power. He occupied the court 
for three days, the room, the whole time, being densely crowded. John 
Quincy Adams said that he was to have $50,000 if he had succeeded. 
Mr. Jones spoke nearly three days. Judge Story who wrote the opinion 
of the Court, upholding the will, and against Webster’s argument, was 
sustained by unanimous concurrence of the other judges, and the 
profession generally supported it, expecially was this true of Chancellor 
Kent. So great were the researches of Binney, that it may be said that 
when a similar case decided by Marshall in 1819 (Baptist Ass’n. v. 
Hart’s Executors, 4 Wheaton, 1), the calendars of the proceedings in 
chancery, from which Binney gleaned more than fifty precedents for his 
contention were not even printed; and Marshall had positively stated 
that there was no trace whatever of any precedent.” — Warren’s 'History 
of the American Bar,’ J(.31-2. 

GREAT JUDGES 

‘‘The world has produced fewer instances of truly great judges than 
it has of great men in almost every other department of civilized life. 
A large portion of the ages that are passed has been altogether incapable 
of producing this excellence. It is the growth only of a government of 
laws, and of a political constitution so free as to invite to the acquisition 
of the highest attainments, and to permit the exercise of the purest 
virtues, without exposure or degradation and contempt, under the frown 
of power. The virtues of a prince may partially correct the mischiefs 
of arbitrary rule, and we may see some rare examples of judicial merit, 
where the laws have no sanction, and the government no foundation. 


58 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


but in the uncontrolled will of a despot; but a truly great judge belongs 
to an age of political liberty, in which he is the representative of the 
abstract justice of the people in the administration of the law, and is 
rewarded for the highest achievements of duty by proportionate admir¬ 
ation and reverence.”— From Binney’s Eulogy of Jno. Marshall, 1835. 

BINNEY AND SERGEANT 

“Binney never lost a case that he ought to have gained when Mr. 
Sergeant gained a ease, that he ought to have losV’ — Mr. Chauncey, 2 
The Forum,' 214 . 

TWO WAYS OF STUDYING LAW 

“There are two different methods of acquiring knowledge of the laws 
of England, and by each of them men have succeeded in public estima¬ 
tion to an almost equal extent. One of them, which may be called the 
old way, is a methodical study of the general system of the law, and its 
grounds and reasons, beginning with the fundamental law of estates and 
tenures, and pursuing the derivative branches in logical succession, and 
the collateral subjects in due order; by which the student acquires a 
knowledge of principles that rule all departments of the science, and 
learns, to feel, as much as to know, what is in harmony with the system 
and what is not. The other is to get an outline of the system by the aid 
of commentaries and to fill up by desultory reading of treatises and re¬ 
ports, according to the bent of the student, without much shape or cer¬ 
tainty in the knowledge so acquired until it is given by investigation 
in the course of practice. A good deal ’of law may be put together by 
a flexible man in the second of these modes, and the public is often 
satisfied; but the profession itself knows the first, by its fruits to be the 
most effectual way of making a great lawyer.”— Binney's Article in 
Encyc. Americana, Art. Edward Tilghman. 

THE LAW A NOBLE STUDY 

“The law is a noble study, and worthy of the most ardent devotion. 
You will find the road to success a hard one to travel; harder than in 
my day, for methods have changed, and competitors are more numerous. 
But do not suffer yourself to become discouraged. For more than eight 
years after my admission to the bar, I could not afford to stir my porridge 
with a silver spoon.”— Letter by Binney to Student, Green Bag, Oct., 1893. 

HAMILTON 

“Hamilton was the greatest man this country ever produced. He did 
more than any other man of his day to give us a government; and Chief 
Justice Marshall, in expounding the Constitution, applied Hamilton’s 
principles and borrowed his language. Read Hamilton’s report as Sec¬ 
retary of the Treasury, upon the Funding Scheme, and then read Mar¬ 
shall’s opinion in McCulloch v. the State of Maryland.” 

—Said by Binney, quoted by Green Bag, Oct., 1893. 


JOEL PRENTISS BISHOP (1811-1884), Massachusetts 


THINKING 

“The loftiest mind if it does not think, places itself on a level with 
the lowest, and the world never contained even one man from whom 
thought was not on some occasion absent.” 

ON STUDYING THE LAW 

“If you wish to dwarf yourself and make yourself and make your 
legal exertions amount to zero, confine yourself to State law. You will 
certainly succeed. A lawyer to be anything must enlarge his view by 
reading, and, above all, by thinking. And let me caution you not to 
believe everything you read in a law book. Take the caution with you in 
reading my books. I know that they are more accurate than our books 
average, but nobody is to be trusted. True, I trust myself, but God has 
given me nobody else to trust. And he has done the like with you. 
You must trust yourself; and you are undoubtedly conscious that you 
can do this only as the result of careful study and meditation. Do not 
let anybody fool you into believing that you can learn law, and worst 
of all, that you can practice law, by giving your thoughts to the points 
decided, and ignoring legal doctrine and reasoning.” 

—Joel Prentiss Bishop, Cambridge, Mass. Author of Criminal 
Law, Divorce, Contract-Law, and Non-Contract Law, etc. 

The above is from a letter from Mr. Bishop to Nat. B. Jones, of San 
Antonio, Texas, written Mr. Jones, Oct. 25, 1885, when in the practice 
of the law, at Morristown, Tenn. 


CONSTITUTION OF THE U. S. 

“We speak of our Constitution as the wise organic instrument under 
whose provisions the nation has moved on to strength and glory; but that 
Constitution was the handiwork of lawyers. They framed it, and they 
have interpreted it. Think how we should have drifted, and what a 
helpless mass of people we should have been, without its grants, limita¬ 
tions and distributions of power. And, in a general way, the same may 
be said of every State Constitution, and of every statute. It is the brain 
of the lawyer which fashions them, and his brain that applies and makes 
them useful. As a general rule, made more conspicuous even by the few 
brilliant exceptions, the lawyer has been the legislator, the judge and the 
executive.” 

—Address by David J. Brewer, ^The Great Need of the Profession —« 
Better Education,' at Detroit, Mich., Aug. 27, 1895, Am. Bar Ass'n- 



JEREMIAH S. BLACK (1810-1883), Pennsylvania 

A DISSENTING OPINION 

“The judgment now about to be given is one of death’s doings. No 
one can doubt that if Judge Gibson and Judge Coulter had lived, the 
plaintiff could not have been thus deprived of his property, and thou¬ 
sands of other men would have been saved from the imminent danger to 
which they are now exposed of losing the homes they have labored and 
paid for. But they are dead, and the law which should have protected 
those sacred rights has died with them. It is a melancholy reflection 
that the property of a citizen should be held by a tenure so frail. But 
new lords, new laws is the order of the day. Hereafter, if any man be 
offered a title which the Supreme Court has decided to be good, let him 
not buy it if the judges who made the decision are dead; if they are living 
let him get an insurance on their lives, for ye know not what a day or 
an hour will bring forth. The majority of this court changes on the 
average once every nine years, without counting the changes of death and 
resignation. If each set of judges shall consider themselves at liberty 
to over-throw the doctrines of their predecessors, our system of juris¬ 
prudence (if system it may be called) would be the most fickle, uncertain 
and vicious that the civilized world ever saw. A French constitution 
or a South American republic, or a Mexican administration, would be 
an immortal thing in comparison to the short-lived principles of Penn¬ 
sylvania law. The rules of property, which ought to be as steadfast as 
the hills, will become as unstable as the waves. To avoid this great 
calamity, I know of no resource but that of stare decisis (to stand by 
decided opinions).”—Jerem^aA S. Black, Pa. 

(Justice Samuel F. Miller thought Judge Black the greatest lawyer 
who appeared before the Supreme Court in his day, and Miller was the 
ablest judge on the bench every day he was a member of the Supreme 
Court. Says Savoyard: “Black was a master of invective. There is 
nothing in Junius to compare with his open letters to Chas. Francis 
Adams on Seward, and to Henry Wilson on Stanton; in style, in learning 
in rhetoric, in force, or even in sarcasm and invective. As arguments, 
they are simply overwhelming; as English Compositions they are price¬ 
less classics.”— Dissenting opinion, Hole v. Rittenhouse, 2 Phila. Rep., Ji7. 

It was an ejectment suit, before the Supreme Court three times. 

— The Author. 

THE DISSOLUTION OF A CORPORATION 

“What the defendant means to do is to execute the plain mandate of 
the supreme law-making power of the state; to carry into effect an Act 
of Assembly, passed in regular form. This Act, if it be law at all, is 
paramount to all other law on the subject, and must be obeyed. If, 
however, the legislature had no power to pass it, then it is wholly void 
and we must regard it as if the place it occupies on the statute book were, 
a blank. 

“The right of the judiciary to declare a statute void, and to arrest 
its execution, is one which, in the opinion of the courts, is coupled with 
responsibihties so grave that it is never to be exercised except in very 
clear cases; one department of the government is bound to presume 
that another has acted rightly. The party who wishes us to pronounce 
a law unconstitutional, takes upon himself the burden of proving, beyond 
all doubt, that it is so. 

“It is also very well settled that no statute is unconstitutional merely 
because it is wrong in policy or principle. It is not enough to prove 
that it is contrary to a sound public morality, or injurious to private 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


61 


rights. Inconsistency with rules of law or principles of equity, will 
not make it void. Nothing will have that effect but a direct collision 
between its provisions and those of the federal or state constitution. 
For this proposition I have no authority or reasons to offer beyond 
what are already on record in the case of Sharpless vs. The City of Phila¬ 
delphia, 9 Harris, 147. 

“The plaintiffs’ counsel assert that the Act of 1855, under which the 
defendant proposes to take the railroad into his possession, impairs the 
obligation of a contract. The Constitution of the U. S. (Art. 1, Sec. 10), 
and that of Pennsylvania (Art. IX, Sec. 10), forbid the making of any 
law impairing the obligation of contracts. 

“An act granting corporate privileges to a body of men is, when ac¬ 
cepted, a contract between the state and the corporation. It is not 
worth while now to try whether this doctrine will stand the test of orig¬ 
inal principles. It is sustained by everything that we are bound to 
regard as authority, by the decisions of all the courts in the country, by 
the opinion of the legal profession, and by the general acquiescence of 
the people. It is not denied by the defendant or his counsel, or by any¬ 
body^ else who has attempted to sustain the action of the legislature 
in this case. Being a contract, it cannot be rescinded by the act of one 
party without the consent of the other. A grant of corporate privileges 
for a special period cannot be resumed by the state within such period. 
If the charter be without limitations as to time, it is forever irrepealable, 

“It does not follow from this that corporations are beyond the reach 
of public control. When the privileges they enjoy are fraudulently 
abused, the courts may pronounce them forfeited. In some cases also, 
the legislature when granting the franchises, reserves to itself the right 
to revoke them. When the charter contains such stipulation, it is as much 
a part of the contract as anything else that is in it. 

“***The authority given by the Act of Oct. 1855, to the defendant to 
take possession of the railroad is asserted by the plaintiffs’ counsel to 
be an act of confiscation—a taking of private property for public use 
without compensation. If this be true, the injunction ought to be awarded; 
for no legislature can do such a thing under our constitution. When a 
corporation is dissolved by a repeal of its charter, the legislature may 
appoint, or authorize the governor to appoint a person to take charge of 
its assets for the use of the creditors and stockholders; and this is not 
confiscation, any more than it is confiscation to appoint an adminis¬ 
tration to a dead man, or a committee for a lunatic. But money, or 
goods, or lands, which are or were the private property of a defunct 
corporation, cannot be arbitrarily seized for the use of the state without 
compensation paid or provided for. This act, however, takes nothing 
but .the road. Is that private property? Certainly not! It is a public 
highway, solemnly devoted by law to the public use. When the lands 
were taken to build it on they were taken for public use; otherwise they 
could not have been taken at all. It is true the plaintiffs had a right 
to take tolls, from all who traveled or carried freight on it, according 
to certain rates fixed in the charter, and it was gone when the charter 
was repealed. The state may grant to a corporation, or to an individual, 
the franchise of taking tolls on any highway, opened, or to be opened, 
whether it be a railroad or river, canal or bridge, turnpike or common 
road. When the franchise ceases by its own limitation, by forfeiture, or 
by repeal, the highway is thrown back on the hands of the state, and it 
becomes her duty, as the sovereign guardian of the public rights and 
interests, to take care of it. She may renew the franchise, give it to some 
other person, exercise it herself, or declare the highway open and free 
to all the people. If the railway itself was the private property of 
the stockholders, then it remains theirs and they may use it without a 
charter as other people use their own—^run it on their own account— 
charge what tolls they please—close it or open it when they think proper. 


62 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


disregard every interest except their own. The repeal of charters on 
such terms would be courted by every railroad company in the state; for 
it would have no effect but to emancipate them from the control of law, 
and convert their limited privileges into broad, unbounded license. 
On this principle a corporation might be rewarded, but never punished, for 
misconduct. Repeal of its charter, instead of bringing it to a shameful 
end, would put ‘length of days in its right hand, and in its left riches and 
honor.’ But it is not so. Railroads made by the authority of the Com¬ 
monwealth upon land taken under her right of eminent domain, and 
established by her laws as thoroughfares for the commerce that passes 
through her borders, are her highways. No corporation has any prop erty 
in them, though corporations may have franchises annexed to and exercis¬ 
able within them.”— J. S. Black, in 1856. 

The charter of the Erie & N. E. Railroad Co. had been repealed and 
Mr. Casey appointed to take possession of the property. The Company 
asked the Supreme Court to enjoin Mr. Casey from doing so. The 
opinion is a classic in Pennsylvania law; its reasoning, as above, has be¬ 
come a part of its jurisprudence. 

THE OSAGE LAND CASE 

“Opinion by Davis. Miller affirmed. Lawrence sustained. Shannon 
honored. Peck glorified. Justice vindicated. Truth triumphant. Settlers 
protected. The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” J. S. Black’s telegram 
to his waiting clients,—the inhabitants of five counties in Kansas, bona 
fide settlers and owners, who had bought and paid for the lands, and were 
being ousted and ejected from their homes by certain railroad companies, 
who unjustly claimed the Osage Lands. 

FARMING 

“The cultivation of the earth is the only trade which God ever com¬ 
manded any man to exercise. And it seems to have been a part of the 
divine economy to surround it with attractions. Our natural organization 
is fitted for the country and not for the town. The human eye is so formed 
that it rests with pleasure on green and blue and cannot endure any other 
color for a long time without injury. Our sense of sight is never so much 
delighted, because never employed in a manner so congenial to the nature 
of its organ, as when we look upward into the clear blue heavens, or 
abroad upon the green earth. When man was entirely blessed he was 
placed in a garden—not merely a patch for cabbages and potatoes, 
three perches square and close by the side of a paling fence—but com¬ 
prehending grounds of vast extent and boundless magnificence, adorned 
with fiowers and enriched with fruits. Hill and dale and fountain, 
shady walks and sunny slopes, rich fields and verdant meadows, with 
four great rivers rolling through them, made a landscape such as no eye 
has ever seen since the fall. It was here that heaven and all happy con¬ 
stellations shed their secret influence on the marriage of our first parents. 
Imagination has never painted a scene of perfect happiness without 
similar surroundings. Scenes of Idilian beauty form the principal feature 
on the heaven of every religion whether true or false. The Elysian 
fields of the Greek mythology, and the Paradise of Mohamet are ready 
examples. The land which flowed with milk and honey was, to the Jew 
a type of that better country to which he should go after his journey 
through the wilderness of life was closed. And many a Christian, when 
his _ soul recoiled from the dark stream of death, has felt his courage 
revived by the assurance that sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, 
stand dressed in living green. 

Other occupations are followed for the wealth and fame they produce, 
but agriculture is crowded with amateurs, who pursue it for its own sake 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


63 


and thousands feel the same desire whose narrow means forbid them to 
indulg^e their wishes. When Cincinnatus abandoned the leadership of 
the mightiest empire in the world to hurry home and finish his plowing, 
and when Washington retired from the Presidency to cultivate his farm, 
they both yielded to an inclination as common as it is natural” 

— To an Agricultural Society. 

TRIAL BY JURY 

“I do not assert that the jury trial is an infallible mode of ascertaining ^ 
truth. Like everything human, it has its imperfections, I only say, 
that it is the best protection for innocence and the surest mode of punish¬ 
ing guilt that has yet been discovered. It has borne the test of a longer 
experience, and borne it better, than any other legal institution that 
ever existed among men. England owes more of her freedom, her grand¬ 
eur, and her prosperity, to that than to all other causes put together. 

It has had the approbation not only of those who lived under it, but of 
great thinkers who looked at it calmly from a distance, and judged it 
impartially. Montesquieu and De Tocqueville speak of it with an 
admiration as rapturous as Coke and Blackstone. Within the present 
century, the most hightened states of continental Europe have trans¬ 
planted it into their countries, and no people ever adopted it once 
were afterwards wilhng to part with it. It was only in 1830 that an inter¬ 
ference with it in Belgium provoked a successful insurrection which 
permanently divided one kingdom into two. In the same year, the 
revolution of the Barricades gave the right of trial by jury to every . 
Frenchman.” 


REPLY TO WAYNE MACVEAGH 

“My friend from Dauphin (Mr. Mac Veagh) spoke of legislation under 
the figure of a stream, which, he said, ought always to fiow with crystal 
water. It is true that the Legislature is the fountain from which the 
current of our social and political life must run, or we must bear no life; 
but as it now is, we keep it merely as a cistern for foul toads to knot and 
gender in. He has described the tree of liberty, as his poetic fancy sees 
it, in the good time coming, when weary men shall rest under its shade, 
and singing birds shall inhabit its branches and make most agreeable 
music. But what is the condition of that tree now? Weary men do indeed 
rest under it, but they rest in their unrest, and the longer they remain 
there, the more weary they become. And the birds—it is not the wood¬ 
lark, nor the thrush, nor the nightingale, nor any of the musical tribe, 
that inhabit the branches of our trees. The foulest birds that wing the 
air have made it their roosting-place, and their obscene droppings cover 
all the plains about them—-the kite, with his beak always sharpened for 
some crude repast; the vulture every ready to swoop upon his prey; 
the buzzard, digesting his filthy meal and watching for the moment 
when he can gorge himself again upon the prostrate carcass of the common¬ 
wealth. And the raven is hoarse that sits there croaking despair to all 
who approach for any clean or honest purpose,” 

—In Constitutional Convention, whicH adopted the Constitution 
of Pennsylvania of 1873. 

PATRIOTISM 

“Patriotism in its true sense, does indeed dignify and adorn human 
nature. It is an exalted and comprehensive species of charity, which 
hides a multitude of sins. The patriotism of Washington, which laid 
deep the foundation of free institutions and set the noble example of 
implicit obedience to the laws; the patriotism of John Hampden, who 


64 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


voluntarily devoted his fortune and his life to the maintenance of legal 
justice; that patriotism of Cato, who resisted the destructive madness 
of his countrymen and greatly fell with a falling state; the patriotism 
of Daniel O’Connell, who spent his time and talents in constant efforts 
to relieve his people from the galling yoke of clerical oppression; the 
patriotism of the elder Pitt, who speaking in the cause of universal 
liberty, loudly rejoiced that America, had resisted the exactions of a 
tyrannical Parliament—to such patriotism some errors may be pardoned. 
When men- like these are found to have committed a fault, it is well 
that history should deal with it tenderly— 

‘And sad as angels for the good man’s sin. 

Weep to record and blush to give it in.’ ” 

—From Letters to Henry Wilson, Black's Essays and Speeches,” 

626. 

“Black’s invective has had no parallel, in my judgment, in American 
forensic literature. In this field his command of the English language 
has not been excelled on either side of the sea. He was as much superior 
to Junius, as an equal skill in the language, combined with a vastly 
superior knowledge, could make him, to say nothing of the superior 
manhood which made him sign his name to even the bitterest of his 
philippics.”— Senator Zebulon Vance of N. C. 

STATE RIGHTS 

“The Union is necessarily perpetual. No State can lawfully with¬ 
draw or be expelled from it. The Federal Constitution is as much a 
part of the Constitution of every State as if it had been textually in¬ 
serted therein. The Federal Government is sovereign within its own 
sphere and acts directly upon the individual citizen of every State. 
Within these limits its coercive power is ample to defend itself. It can 
suppress insurrection, fight battles, conquer armies, disperse hostile 
combinations, and punish any and all of its enemies. It can meet, repel 
and subdue all those who rise against it.” 

—Opinion of Jeremiah S. Black, while Secretary of State to Pres. 

Buchanan, Dec. 17, 1860. 

NULLIFICATION 

“The truth i^, that the exclusive authority of the Federal judges to 
decide all cases arising under the Federal laws was the lion in the path 
of nullification. It saved the country from dismemberment then, and no 
one knows the day nor the hour when it may be necessary to invoke it 
again for the same purpose. When it ceases to be maintained, the Union 
of the States will become a rope of sand. The highest tribunals of the 
States (that of Wisconsin always excepted) have uniformly refused to 
adopt this wild notion of their power over the Federal laws. It was 
decidedly repudiated by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in Simm’s 
case; by that of New York^ in Prime’s case; and by that of Pennsylvania 
in Williamson’s case. It has been exploded long before by Judge Cheves, 
of South Carolina, in an opinion of singular brevity, clearness, and 
force.” 

—Jeremiah S. Black in argument before U. S. Supreme Court in 

Ableman v. Booth, and the U. S. v. Booth. 


SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE (1723-1780), England 


LAWYER’S FAREWELL TO HIS MUSE 

“But now the pleasing dream is o’er— 

These scenes must charm me now no more; 

Lost to the field and torn from you, 

Farewell! a long, a last adieu i * * * 

Then welcome business, welcome strife. 

Welcome the cares, the erminal life. 

The visage wan, the purblind sight. 

The toil by day, the lamp by night. 

The tedious forms, the solemn prate. 

The pert dispute, the dull debate. 

The drowsy bench, the babbling hall— 

For thee, fair Justice, welcome all! 

Thus, though my noon of life be past. 

Yet let my setting sun at last 
Find out the still, the rural cell 
Where sage retirement loves to dwell I 
There let me taste the home-felt bliss 
Of innocence and inward peace; 

Untainted by the guilty bride. 

Uncursed amid the harpy tribe; 

No orphan’s cry to wound my ear 
' My honor and my conscience clear; 

Thus may I calmly meet my end. 

Thus to the grave in peace descend!’’ 

The above was written when Blackstone abandoned literary and scienti¬ 
fic pursuits, to which he had applied himself almost exclusively, and 
this was when he was but eighteen. At twenty-three, he was made 
bachelor of civil law, and for years made little progress; at thirty-one, he 
was engaged as counsel in the county election, at Oxford; at thirty-five, 
became Vinerian professor, at Oxford, and gave sixty lectures a year, 
on the Common Law of England, for which he was paid $1,000 yearly; with 
the distinction these lectures gave him, he returned to London, at thirty- 
six, resuming his practice; in 1765, when forty-two, appeared his first 
volume on the Commentaries on the Laws of England. It passed 
through eight editions, during his life, and with his lectures made him 
$80,000.— Author. 


THE OBJECT OF SOCIETY 

“The great end of society is to protect the weakness of individuals, 
by the united strength of the community.”— Commentaries, 262. 

GOVERNMENT 

“Man was formed for society; and, as is demonstrated by the writers 
on the subject, is neither capable of living alone, nor indeed has the courage 
to do it. However, it is impossible for the whole race of mankind to be 
united in one great society, they must necessarily divide into many, 
and form separate states, commonwealths, and nations, entirely independ¬ 
ent of each other, and yet liable to a natural intercourse.” 

— Commentaries: Of the Nature of Laws in General. 


66 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


LAW 

“Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of 
action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether 
animate or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus, we say, the laws of 
motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of 
nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action which is prescribed 
by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.” 

— Commentaries: Of the Nature of Laws in General. 

THE LAW SHOULD BE STUDIED AS PART OF ONE’S 
EDUCATION 

“But that a science, which distinguishes the criterions of right and 
wrong; which teaches to establish the one, and prevent, punish, or redress 
the other; which employs in its theory the noblest faculties of the soul, 
and exerts in its practice the cardinal virtues of the heart; a science, 
which is universal in its use and extent, accommodated to each individual, 
yet comprehending the whole community; that a science like this should 
ever have been deemed unnecessary to be studied in an university, is a 
matter of astonishment and concern.” 

—Introduction to the Commentaries, Sec. 1. 

IN WHOM GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE REPOSED 

“In general, all mankind will agree that government should be reposed 
in such persons in whom these qualities are most likely to be found, the per¬ 
fection of which is among the attributes of Him who is emphatically styled 
the Supreme Being; the three great requisites, I mean, of wisdom, of 
goodness, and of power—wisdom to discern the real interest of the com¬ 
munity; goodness, to endeavor always to pursue that real interest; and 
strength, or power, to carry this knowledge and intention into action. 
These are the natural foundations of sovereignty, and these are the 
requisites that ought to be found in every well-considered frame of govern¬ 
ment.”— Commentaries: Of the Nature of Laws in General. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON ON HIS COMMENTARIES 

“Though the most eloquent and best digested of our catalogue, has 
been perverted more than all other to the degeneracy of legal science. 
A student finds there a smattering of everything, and his indolence 
easily persuades him that if he understands that book he is master of the 
whole body of the law.”— To Judge Tyler, 1812. 

AUSTIN’S OPINION 

“The arrangement is a slavish and blundering copy of Sir Matthew 
Hale’s; in the whole work there is not a single particle of original dis¬ 
criminating thought; its flattery of Enghsh institutions is a ‘paltry but 
effectual artifice’ which has made it popular.” 

LORD ELLENBOROUGH’S TESTIMONY 

“He made himself a learned lawyer by writing the Commentaries.” 
SIR WILLIAM JONES’ OPINION 

“His Commentaries are the most correct and beautiful that were ever 
exhibited of any human science.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


67 


LORD AVONMORE’S PANEGYRIC 

“He it was who first gave to the law the air of a science. He found it 
a skeleton, and clothed it with life, color, and complexion; he embraced 
the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into youth, health and beauty.” 

HIS COMMENTARIES PASSED THROUGH EIGHT EDITIONS 
DURING HIS LIFE 

The first volume of his Commentaries was published in 1765. During 
the next fifteen years, as he died in 1780, the work passed through eight 
editions, and with his lectures made him $80,000. The completed work 
appeared in 1769. At that time there were 160 offenses punishable 
with death, in England. 

JEREMY BENTHAM ON THE COMMENTARIES 

While Bentham’s strictures on the Commentaries, and especially on 
‘the antipathy to reformation,’ or perhaps, more accurately speaMng, 
the desire which pervades the work to support the system of English 
law, upon grounds and reasons insufficient in themselves, yet he says as 
to their style: 

“He it is, in short, who, first of all institutional writers, has taught 
jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentleman; 
put a polish upon that rugged science; cleansed her from the soot and cob¬ 
webs of the office, and if he has not enriched her with that precision which 
is drawn only from the sterling treasury of the sciences, he decked her 
out, however, to advantage, from the toilet of classic erudition; enlivened 
her with metaphors and allusions; and sent her abroad in some measure 
to entertain,the most miscellaneous and even the most fastidious societies.” 

CHARLES JAMES FOX’S CRITICISM 

Upon the style of the Commentaries, Mr. Fox, passed a high panegyric, 
but as a constitutional writer he took issue, and said : 

“His purity of style I particularly admire. He was distinguished as 
much for simplicity and strength as any writer in the English language. 
He was perfectly free from all gallicisms and ridiculous affectations, for 
which so many of our modern authors and orators are so remarkable. 
Upon this ground, therefore, I esteem Judge Blackstone; but as a con¬ 
stitutional writer he is by no means an object of my esteem; and for this 
amongst other reasons, that he asserts the latter years of the reign of 
Charles the Second (I mean those which followed the enactment of the 
habeas corpus act) to have been the most constitutional period to be 
found in our history, not excepting any period that followed. Not^?" it 
would be inconsistent with all the principles which I have ever held, to 
regard such a writer as a constitutional authority, much less to look up 
to him as an oracle.”— Cobhett’s Pari. Deb., Vol. 6, 31J^. 

ON GOVERNMENT 

“The principle use of government is to direct the united strength of 
the community in the best and most effectual manner to protect the 
weakness of individuals.”— Commentaries, 262. 


LOGAN E. BLECKLEY (1827- ), Georgia 

SCRUTINIZING A DECISION 


“My trouble is, to become fully persuaded that I know. I reconsider, 
revise, scrutinize, revise the scrutiny and scrutinize the revision, and then 
I discover the thing is all wrong. My colleagues are called; we reconsider 
and decide the other way. Then I am satisfied; for when I know the law 
is not on one side, it must be on the other.” 

TRUSTS 

“Trusts are children of equity; and in a court of equity they are at 
home, under the family roof tree, and around the hearth of their ancestors.” 
—In Kupperman v. McGehee, 63 Ga., 250. 

PREACHING—THE HOG AND HOMINY OF RELIGION 

“If any debt ought to be paid, it is one contracted for the health of 
souls. Simple and exact justice in the relation, is the hog and hominy, 
the bacon and beans of moralty, public and private.” 

Judge Beckley, therefore, ordered a Baptist Church to be sold to pay 
the preacher’s salary. 

MODESTY AND APPRECIATION 

“My thanks, present and everlasting, are due you for a copy of the 
de luxe edition of the engravings of ‘Eminent American, Enghsh and 
Canadian Lawyers.’ The work is a real treasure, and I shall prize it 
accordingly. It is a piece of music in light and shadow, with o^y one 
discordant note, that note being my own portrait; which is out of place 
in a composition of so high an order. My self-love is fiattered, but my 
sober sense demurs. I feel the awkward embarrassment of a rustic in 
elegant and refined company.”— To the author of the engravings, in which 
his portrait is one. 

Says Irving Browne: “When it comes to wit, of the sort that illumi¬ 
nates the subject. Chief Justice Bleckley is easily chief among all Ameri¬ 
can judges.” 

IN THE MATTER OF REST 

Beckley, J.— 

“Rest for the hand and brow and breast 
For fingers, heart and brain! 

Rest and peace! a long release 
From labor and from pain; 

Pain of doubt, fatigue, despair; 

Pain of darkness, everywhere. 

And seeking fight in vain. 

Peace and rest! are they the best 
For mortals here below? 

In soft repose from work and woes 
A bliss for men to know? 

A bliss of time is bliss of toil; 

No bill but this, from sin and soil, 

Does God permit to grow.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


69 


This was drawn by Judge Bleckley, upon his retirement, aftei: four 
years as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, of Georgia, in 1880. 
It is in the form of a regular judicial decree. By order of the Court, the 
lines were spread on the minutes. Judge Bleckley, was returned to the 
Supreme Bench of Georgia, as Chief Justice, in 1887, and held the posi¬ 
tion until death. 


PROCEDURE 

“Some meritorious cases, indeed many, are lost in passing through 
the justice of procedure; but they all are justly lost, provided the rules 
of procedure have been correctly applied to them. That a just debt 
is unrecognized, a just title defeated, or a guilty man acquitted, is no 
evidence that justice has not been done by the Court or jury. It may 
be the highest evidence that justice has been done, for it is perfectly 
just not to uphold a just title, not to convict a guilty man, if the debt, 
or the title, or the guilt be not verified. It is unjust to do justice by doing 
injustice. A discovery cannot be made by an unjust search. An end 
not attainable by just means is not attainable at all; ethically, it is an 
impossible end. Courts cannot do justice of substance except by and 
through justice of procedure. They must not reach justice of substance 
by violating justice of procedure. They must realize both, if they can, 
but if either has to fall it must be justice of substance, for what justice 
of procedure Courts cannot know, nor be made to know, what justice 
of substance is, or which party ought to prevail.” 

—From 'Truth at the Bar\ p. 10. 

WHAT A LAWYER SHOULD BE 

“Some people think that a lawyer’s business is to make white black; 
but his real business is to make white white in spite of the stained and 
soiled condition which renders its true color questionable. He is simply 
an intellectual washing-machine.” 

—From letter to Nat. B. Jones, formerly of Morristown, Tenn., later 
of San Antonio, Texas, as told the author. 

BARBER NOT LIABLE AS BAILEE 

“It hath never happened from the earliest times to the present, that bar¬ 
bers, who are an excellent order of small craftsmen, serving their customers 
for a small fee and entertaining them the while vdth the small gossip of 
the town or village, have been held responsible for a mistake made by 
one customer whereby he taketh the hat of another from the common 
rack or hanging place, being in the same room in which customers sit 
to be shaved. The reason is that there is no complete bailment of the hat. 
The barber hath no complete custody thereof, and the fee for shaving is 
too small to compensate him for keeping a servant to watch it, and at 
the same time shave the owner. Moreover, the value of an ordinary 
gentleman’s hat is so much, in proportion to the fee for shaving, that to 
make the barber an insurer against such mistakes of his customers would 
be unreasonable. The loss of one hat would absorb his earnings for a 
whole day; perhaps many days. The barber is a craftsman laboring for 
wages, not a capitalist conducting a business of trade or trust.” 

—Dissenting opinion in Diberto v. Harris, 23 S. E. Rep., 112. 


W. E. BORAH (1865- ), Idaho 

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

“I was reared by Presbyterian parents. The religious strain of Cal¬ 
vin was present in our household. About the time I arrived at the age 
when every boy knows just how the world was made and how man 
accidentally arrived upon earth, I secured from some source the ‘Mistakes 
of Moses.’ I was perfectly fascinated with the story. I soon found out 
that this man of whom I had heard so much at family prayers was a 
worse man than Harrow’s Orchard. He had killed an Egyptian and 
hidden him in the sand. He had done a great many other things un¬ 
necessary to mention here. I was so glad to find that saints were human. 
One day, while sitting under a tree reading, when I ought to have been 
pulling weeds out of the corn, father came along and asked what I was 
reading. I closed the book, and being in a rather close place, like Petti- 
bone, I concluded I would keep still, so I answered not. Father, thinking 
my silence under such circumstances was an admission of guilt, reached 
over, took possession of the book, and I did not read any more out of that 
volume. Some other things happened which it is also unnecessary to 
mention. I went my way disconsolate. I had no Ingersoll, and the 
intellectual heavens were without a star. Finally I secured the life of 
Napoleon Bonaparte, and read it. I came to the conclusion that Napo¬ 
leon was a greater man than Ingersoll,—the greatest genius in war or 
statesmanship that ever lived. I came to the history of his Egyptian 
campaign. I read how he took with him on that trip from Paris, a number 
of philosophers, savants from the salons of Paris,—^learned men, wise 
men,—men who were teaching in that day, as some would vainly teach 
now, that there is nothing higher or more divine than the impulses 
and emotions of the human heart, nothing greater or more godlike than 
the human intellect; men who taught that there was no difference, as 
my eloquent friend now says, between the unlettered barbarian mut¬ 
tering his unmeaning words at the foot of a black idol, and the jubilant 
soul looking up to the God on Calvary, asking for guidance and direction. 
I read how, one night, these philosophers sat upon the deck of the ship 
and discussed, in their puny way, the mistakes of the Infinite, how they 
finally concluded there was no such thing as religion, no God, nothing 
higher than man. At last they turned to Napoleon for an opinion, who, 
pointing to the firmament above said ‘Tell me who made that firmament, 
and I will then discuss this matter with you.’ This was a revelation to 
me. Skepticism and agnosticism were things of the past. And I say 
to you to-night that I am not a religionist, neither am I a hypocrite, but 
it is too late in this, the morning of the twentieth century, to write upon 
the divine brow of the One who died on Calvary, ‘Impostor’; too late 
to write above that bowed head, ‘False Prophet.’ While some may not 
know, miUions do know, that their Redeemer liveth. It is too late to 
argue against the teachings of Him who said; ‘This day thou shalt be 
with Me in Paradise!’ ” 

—Senator W. E. Borah, in his reply to Clarence Darrow, who was 

defending William D. Haywood, for the murder of ex-Governor 

Stuenenherg, of Idaho, Dec. 30, 1905. Borah was for the prosecution. 

(For Darrow's argument. See ^Darrow'.) 


ELIAS BOUDINOT (1740-1821), Pennsylvania 

TRIBUTE TO AMERICAN WOMANHOOD 

“To whom are we more indebted for the origin of our present happiness 
than to your delicate and discerning sex? In vain did Columbus, our 
great founder and discoverer after settling the principles of his sound 
philosophy, apply to the wise men of his country. In vain did he solicit, 
in strains of the most suppliant humiliation, the different thrones of 
Europe, when kings considered themselves as God’s vicegerents here 
below; despised by the ignorant—traduced by the malevolent—contemned 
by the great—laughed at by the pretended philosophers—and trifled 
with by the arrogance of ministers and their hirelings; all his hopes and 
those of a New World had, at last, sunk in despair, and we, this day, 
might have mingled our fate with the slaves of the Old World, had not 
the penetrating wisdom and persevering magnanimity of the fair, but 
undaunted Isabella, the ornament of your sex, and the jealousy of ours, 
saved this Western World from the obhvion of more than five -thousand 
years. Did she employ the excess of useless treasures in this happy adven¬ 
ture? 

“No! after the refusal of her husband—despising the appendages of 
brilhant royalty, when compared with the general good of mankind, her 
enlarged mind, incapable of being confined by the shackles of the age, 
found a resource in her costly jewels, which she freely offered as a pledge 
to accomplish the glorious discovery of the fourth quarter of the globe! 

“To your sex, then, ladies, are we obliged to yield the palm; had this 
great event depended altogether on our sex, it is not easy to guess what 
our united fate had been at this moment. Instead of our present agreeable 
employment, we might have been hewers of wood and drawers of water 
to some mighty Pharaoh, whose tender mercies would have been cruelty. 
Your right, then, my fair auditory, to a larger portion of the general joy, 
must be acknowledged to be of a superior kind.” 

The above was spoken in 1783—the last year of the Revolution. 
Boudinot was a statesman and philosopher, born in Philadelphia, Pa., 
studied law under Richard Stockton and practiced in New Jersey; was 
President of the Continental Congress, 1782-4; member House of Repre¬ 
sentatives of U. S. from New Jersey, 1789-95. Director mint, 1795- 
1805; founded the American Bible Society; one of his books, “A Star of 
the West,” (1816) is an effort to identify North American Indians with 
the Lost Tribes of Israel. 


JAMES KENT 

“As a judge and author, he will not suffer when compared with the 
greatest names which have adorned the English law. Higher praise is 
not possible to give. * * * Simple as a child in his tastes and habits through¬ 
out his tranquil and useful life; more than any other judge the Creator 
of the equity system of this Country; the author of Commentaries 
which, in accuracy and learning^ in eloquence, purity and vigor of style 
rival those of Sir William Blackstone. His name is admired, his writings 
prized and his judgments at law and in equity respected in every quarter 
of the globe, nowhere more than in England, where in its widening 
conquest the English language of freedom has carried the Enghsh law.” 
—Jno. F. Dillon, “Laws and Jurisprudence of England and 
America,^ 379. 



LUTHER BRADISH, New York 

THE DOCTRINE OP Stare Decisis 

“The people, in forming the organic law of the government of this 
State, very wisely foresaw that in its action and progress, questions of 
interpretation in the settlement of legal principles, and of their appli¬ 
cation, would frequently arise; and thence the necessity of constituting 
some tribunal with general appellate and supervisory powers, whose de¬ 
cisions should be final and conclusively settle and declare the law. The law 
was supposed to have been accomplished in the organization of this 
court. Heretofore, this court, under the Constitution, has been looked 
to by the people as the tribunal of the last resort in the State; and it has 
hitherto been supposed, that when this court had decided a case upon 
its merits, such decision not only determined the rights of the parties 
litigant in that particular case, but that it also settled the principles 
involved in it, as permanent rules of law, universally applicable in all 
future cases embracing similiar facts, and involving the same or analogous 
principles. These decisions thus became at once public law, measures 
of private right, and landmarks of property. They determined the 
rights of persons and things. Parties entered into contracts with each 
other with reference to them, as to the declared and established law; 
law equally binding upon the courts and the people. But the doctrine 
recently put forth would at once overturn this whole body of law founded 
upon the adjudications of this court, built up as it has been by the long 
continued and arduous labors, grown venerable with years, and inter¬ 
woven as it has become with the interests, the habits, and the opinions 
of the people. Under this new doctrine all would be unsettled—nothing 
established. Like the ever returning but never ending labors of the 
fabled Sisyphus, this court, in disregard to the maxim of ^stare decisis*, 
woidd, in each recurring case, have to enter upon its examination and 
decision as if it all were new, without any aid from the experience of the 
past, or the benefit of any established principle or settled law. Each 
case with its decision being thus limited as law to itself alone, would 
in turn pass away and be forgotten, leaving behind it no record of prin¬ 
ciple established, or light to guide, or rule to govern the future." 

—In Hanford v. Archer, ^ Hill, 321. 


FULLERTON’S SKILLFUL CROSS-EXAMINATION 

“During the cross-examination of Henry Ward Beecher, in the cele¬ 
brated Beecher-Tilton case, and after Mr. Beecher had denied his alleged 
intimacy with Mr. Tilton’s wife. Judge Fullerton read a passage from 
one of Mr. Beecher’s sermons to the effect that if a person commits a 
great sin, the exposure of which would cause misery to others, such 
a person would not be justified in confessing it, merely to relieve his own 
conscience. Fullerton then looked straight into Mr. Beecher’s eyes, and 
said: ‘Do you still consider that sound doctrine?’ Mr. Beecher replied, 
‘I do.’ The inference a juryman might draw from this question and 
answer would constitute a subtle argument for that branch of the ease.’’ 

— William Fullerton (1818- ), New York. 

“A cross-examiner equalled by few and excelled by none.’’ 

Graduated with John K. Porter at Union College, and afterwards sat 
on the N. Y. Court of Appeals with Porter; removed to N. Y. in ’52, 
and formed a partnership with Chas. O’Conor. 



JOSEPH PHILO BRADLEY (1813-1892), New Jersey 

THE LAW 

“The law is a science of principles, by which civil society is regulated 
and held together, by which right is eliminated and enforced, and wrong 
is detected and punished. Unless these principles are drawn from the 
books which a student reads,, and deposited in his mind and heart, his 
much reading will be but a dry and unprofitable business. On the con¬ 
trary, if these principles are discovered beneath the husks of text-books 
and reports, if they are extracted, mastered and retained, it will not be 
so_ much the number of the books studied, as the success with which 
this digesting and assimilating process is pursued in studying them, 
which will make the great and successful lawyer.” 

—Justice Bradley, on the Life and Character of Wm. L. Dayton, 1865. 

JOHN G. JOHNSON’S ESTIMATE 

“No lawyer no matter how thorough his research in any particular 
case, was able to present to Judge Bradley an authority of which he was 
ignorant, or a principle of law which was new to him.” 

— Memorial Exercises, tfl U. S. Supreme Court. 

GEORGE F. HOAR’S TRIBUTE 

“In my opinion, Mr. Justice Bradley, has had no superior, save Mar¬ 
shall alone on that Court (the Supreme Court of the U. S.)^ in every 
, quality of a great judge. I doubt, if he has had, on the whole, an equal, 
save Marshall alone.”— 1 Autobiography of Seventy Years, 287. 

t 

WM. DRAPER LEWIS, ON HIS STANDING AT DEATH 

“At his death, the bench, bar and country lost one, who, for the 
clearness of his thought and for the thoroughness of his acquaintance 
with all subjects connected with his profession, was perhaps, without 
a superior in the history of the judiciary.” 

HORACE STERN’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“In manner Bradley was kindly and democratic, and not nearly as 
stern or imperious as was Miller, but grave and sedate, inclined some¬ 
times, it is true, to petulance and to demonstrations of an irascible 
temper, but quickly repentant of any offense created by hasty word or 
action. His dignity was the dignity of simplicity, his strength, the 
strength of quiet power. Men learned to trust him, both as a lawyer 
and as a judge, for his preparation was thorough, his equipment complete. 
He could well afford to scorn attempts at displays of brilliancy; it is 
the volume and not the ruffled surface of the ocean that makes it the most 
potent force of nature. And while American public life has produced 
men of remarkable ability, scholarship has not been so common a virtue 
of our statesmen that Bradley’s fame is apt to be dimmed by com¬ 
parisons. Many as were his other attainments, his legal erudition alone 
would entitle him to pre-eminent rank in that long line of jurists who have 
made the Supreme Court of the United States, the greatest judicial 
tribunal in the world.”— 6 'Great American Lawyers,' If-OJ/.. 


74 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE ACCOMPLISHED LAWYER 

“In order to be an accomplished lawyer, it is necessary, besides having 
a knowledge of law, to be an accomplished man, graced with at least 
a general knowledge of history, of science, of philosophy, of the useful 
arts, of the modes of business, and of everything that concerns the well 
being and intercourse of men in society. He ought to be a man of large 
understanding; he must be a man of large acquirements and rich in 
general information; for he is a priest of the law, which is the bond and 
support of civil society, and which extends tio and regulates every relation 
of one man to another in that society, and every transaction that takes 
place in it.”— From Address to Law Dept, University of Pennsylvania, 188If. 

JUDICIAL INSIGHT 

“Some men seem to be constituted by nature to be masters of judicial 
analysis and insight. Such were Papinean, Sir Matthew Hale, and Lord 
Mansfield, each in his particular province. Such was Marshall in his. 
They seemed to handle judicial questions as the great Euclid did a 
mathematical proposition,—with giant ease.”— Said by Justice Bradley. 

ONE BOOK 

“Perfect familiarity, perfect mastery, of any one good book is a mine 
of intellectual wealth, not merely,—not^o much the matter which is 
thus made one’s own, as for the vocabulary, the diction, the style and the 
manner of expression which is mastered and indelibly fixed on the mind.” 

— To the Law School, University of Pa., I 884 . 

BLACKSTONE 

“There is nothing to compare with the Commentaries of Sir William 
Blackstone, i:|ji completeness of scope, purity and elegance of diction, 
and appositeness, if not always absolute accuracy, of definition and 
statement.” 

GREAT STUDENT,—LARGE LIBRARY 

He read nearly everything in his uncle’s library, while at college, 
completed a course in theology, but before graduation gave up the idea, 
and studied law. His law library of over 5,000 volumes, and his general 
library, still larger, were both thoroughly mastered. He was a reader of 
novels and extremely fond of poetry; made a special study of Shake¬ 
speare. In history, biography and genealogy he seemed to know something 
of almost everybody that was ever heard of.— Author. 

THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES 

“The laws of the United States are laws in the several States, and just 
as much binding on the citizens and courts thereof as the State laws are. 
The United States is not a foreign sovereignty as regards the several 
States, but is a concurrent, and within its jurisdiction, a paramount sov¬ 
ereignty. Every citizen of a State is a subject of two distinct sovereignties, 
having concurrent jurisdiction in the State,—concurrent as to place and 
persons, though distinct as to subject matter.***If an Act of Congress 
gives a penalty to a party aggrieved, without specifying a remedy for its 
enforcement, there is no reason why it should not be enforced, if not 
provided otherwise by some Act of Congress, by a proper action in a State 
court. The fact that a State court derives its existence and functions 


<GfREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


/ O 


from the State laws is no reason why it should not afford rehef; because 
it is subject also to the laws of the United States, and is just as much 
bound to recognize the State laws. The two together form one system 
of jurisprudence, which constitutes the law of the land for the State; 
and the courts of the two jurisdictions are not foreign to each other, nor 
to be treated by each other as such, but as courts of the same country, 
having jurisdiction partly different and partly concurrent. The disposition 
to regard the laws of the United States as emanating from a foreign 
jurisdiction is founded on erroneous views of the nature and relations of 
the State and Federal Governments. It is often the cause of the con¬ 
sequence of an unjustifiable jealousy of the United States government, 
which has been the occasion of disastrous evils to the country.” 

—From opinion hi Claflin v. Houseman, 93 U. S. Rep., 130, {1876). 

FRANK W. HACKETT’S ESTIMATE 

“No man ever sat upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United 
States who, in the extent and variety of his knowledge, has surpassed 
Mr. Justice Bradley. He was a very learned man.” 

—Frank W. Hackett, of the Washington, D. C. Bar. 

TAKEN FOR JANITOR IN PHILADELPHIA 

As Bradley was a small, insignificant looking man, when he went to 
Philadelphia, as one of the Supreme Bench, to hold court, in that circuit, 
he was accosted, upon entering the building, by one of the janitors, 
who, taking him for a casual visitor, assumed to show him over the various 
floors. Coming to the Judge’s Chambers, Bradley inquired what room 
it was. “Oh, this is for the Judges, but they haven’t arrived yet. Laying 
aside his hat and umbrella, the Judge quietly remarked,—“One of them 
has!” 

DRAWN ON JUSTICE’S JURY 

When he went to Washington to take his place as Justice of the United 
.States Supreme Court, he was walking along Pennsylvania Avenue, when 
a constable looking for a juryman, summoned him as one of the six. Mr. 
Justice Bradley went almost to the Justice’s Court before asking the 
constable if he was in the habit pf putting Justices of the Supreme Court 
of the U. S,, in his jury-box. Justice Bradley, afterwards said, he had 
a good mind to go into court and carry the joke still further. 

GAVE UP $1,400, RATHER THAN ADMIT HIS NEGLIGENCE AS 

A LAWYER 

When busy writing a brief, during his practice at the Newark, N. J. 
Bar, a client bustled into his office, and said he wanted that $1,500 note 
protested, laying it down; that the maker was insolvent, but the indorser 
was good, and he wanted to hold him. “All right,” said Bradley, who was 
a man of a few words, “I’ll ’tend to it.” With this, he shoved the' note 
under his desk-pad, and went on with his work. In a few days, his client, 
—the owner of the note, called to see if Bradley had collected the money, 
as he knew as soon as the surety was notified he would come in and pay. 
“Oh, yes,” said Bradley, at the same time taking out his check-book, and 
writing him a check for $1,400,—the amount of the note, less his fee of 
$100. The fact was, the note had been forgotten, and was then lying 
under the desk-pad, where Bradley had put it; but he would not admit 
his carelessness, and thus paid $1,400 for his forgetfulness. 

— This incident was told the compiler of this work, by a Newark, N. J. 
lawyer, who at the time was reading law in Mr. Bradley's office. 


76 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


BROKE BOOK-CASE 

Judge Bradley had a violent temper, and although a consistent church- 
member, would swear at inanimate things when enraged. On one occasion, 
upon going to his office to get some books to take to Trenton, whither 
he was going to argue a case in the Supreme Court, found he had changed 
his pantaloons, and left his book-case key behind. Says the young 
lawyer, who was then reading law in his office:— 

“He was so much exasperated that he took an old hatchet, broke in 

the doors, saying as was his habit,—‘There, d-n you,—I’ll teach 

you to be locked.’ ” 

SCIENTIFIC AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR 

He applied himself to scientific investigation, to problems of the 
higher mathematics, astronomy, physics, and mechanics. Was thoroughly 
familiar with botany, chemistry, geology, and kindred sciences, and he 
kept pace with the new discoveries being made in each of them. 

He studied foreign languages, reading many great authors in the 
originals. Became one of the most accomplished Biblical scholars in the 
country. Always kept beside him a copy of the New Testament in 
the original Greek, which at church he never failed to consult. He 
delivered in various places, just before coming to the bench, lectures 
upon the English Bible. 

CUT INTO SHREDS A NEW PAIR OF BREECHES 

Upon one occasion, (by the way, he was very unconcerned about his 
dress), he was about to go before an important tribunal, in an appealed 
case, and Mrs. Bradley persuaded him to change his pantaloons, which 
were well worn at the knees and in the seat, for a new pair, which she had 
gotten unbeknown to him. This delayed his start, but he hurried to 
the station, only to find he had been left. When he returned to the house 
he took off the pants, took out his knife and cut them into shreds, saying, 
as he did so:— 

“There, d—n you. I’ll teach you to make me miss my train!” 

— Told the compiler, by a N. J. lawyer, who read law with Bradley. 

SOME IMPORTANT CASES 

Among his most important trials, while at the bar, were the Meeker will 
case, the Passaic bridge case, the New Jersey Zinc, and the Belvidere 
Land cases; the Hardin and DonneUy murder cases. His intellectual dis¬ 
tinction was thoroughness,—was always at work, and said,—‘All I ever 
did was done by dogged and unyielding perseverence.’ He had the 
three elements of greatness,—wisdom, integrity of purpose, and sim¬ 
plicity. He was learned in the common law, equity, admiralty, civil 
and patent law, and the jurisprudence of the world,—ancient and modern; 
was proficient in mathematics, the natural sciences, and in astronomy, 
—making abstruse calcuations for forty centuries in the future, and his 
general attainments covered a wide range. He was, pronounced by one 
of his associates,—“The most learned man I ever knew;” by George Hard¬ 
ing, himself an expert patent lawyer,—“Unsurpassed as a patent lawyer, 
if ever equalled;” by Cortlandt Parker, a Newark, N. J. lawyer,who had 
frequently locked horns with him,—“The most deeply informed man 
I ever met, on subjects foreign to his profession.” His decisions, found 
scattered through sixty volumes, 475 in number, with 93 dissents, are 
couched in pure English, vigorous but elegant. 


JAMES T. BRADY (1815-1869), New York 

JAS. T. BRADY CARED FOR THE GOOD OPINION OF HIS 
FELLOW-LAWYERS 

“I do honor greatness, genius and achievements, but I honor those 
qualities in a man’s nature which show that while he holds a proper relation 
to the Deity, he has also a just estimate of his fellow-men and a kindly 
feeling towards them. I would rather have it said of me after death, 
by my brethren of the bar, that they were sorry I left their companion¬ 
ship, than to be spoken of in the highest strains of gifted panegyric.” 

— Jas. T. Brady,—At a meeting of the Bar of N. Y. in memory of 
Daniel S. Dickinson, in 1866. 

SHAKESPEARE 

“Perhaps no author blended the passions of pity and terror with 
more force and originality than Shakespeare—pity, not only for youth, 
innocence, nobility of character, and virtue, as in Imogene, Desdemona, 
Brutus, Coriolanus—or for insignificant persons, like the Duke of Clarence, 
or profligate or worthless ones like Cardinal Wolsey,—terror in all its 
forms, from the madness of Lear, and the ghost of Hamlet, up to the 
dreams of Richard and Lady Macbeth. But perhaps the most miraculous 
of all his representations are those in which he has portrayed the wander¬ 
ings of a disordered intellect, and especially that species of distraction 
which arises from the excess of sorrow.” 

—James T.Brady in a letter to a friend. 

Mr. Brady said to have defended 51 men for their lives, during his 34 
years’ practice, saving all from the gallows. 

Jas. T. Brady: “Many of Brady’s noblest productions were not 
unlike the Corinthian pillar, in which the strength of the column is lost 
sight of in the symmetry of its proportions and the beauty of its decora¬ 
tions.”— Anon. 

THE STUDY OF THE LAW 

“The study of the law is like sealing the Alps—you must adopt the 
indomitable energy of Hannibal, and your ascent will be easy; of all 
things beware of haK-knowledge—it begets pedantry and conceit; it 
was what the poet meant when he said, ‘A little learning is a danger¬ 
ous thing.’ Make your learning practical, for a bookworm is a mere 
driveler—a gossamer. There is a deal of legal learning that is dry, cold, 
revolting; but it is an old feudal castle, in perfect preservation, which 
the legal architect who aspires to the first honors of his profession, will 
delight to explore, and learn all the uses to which the various parts are 
to be put, and thus he will better understand and relish the progressive 
improvements of the science in modern times.” 

— Thos. J. Brady, father of Jas. T. Brady. 

Brady’s father was noted for his intellectual acquirements, and as one 
of the most accomplished scholars in New York City.' The above was 
written to Jas. T. Brady, his son. 

BRADY AND O’CONOR CONTRASTED 

“Among the New York lawyers of Irish parents, but American born, 
the most conspicuous were Charles O’Conor and James T. Brady; both 
alike in being lawyers, but wholly unlike in their chief characteristics 


78 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


and personal appearance. Mr. O’Conor was tall, well proportioned, 
with little remarkable in his general appearance, except that his counten¬ 
ance usually wore an extremely thoughtful expression. Mr. Brady was 
short, rather small, well proportioned, except his head, which was very 
large and out of proportion to the rest of his figure. On account of the 
great size of his head, Mr. Brady could only wear a hat made especially 
for him. Any one who, for the first time, saw O’Conor engaged in an argu¬ 
ment or trial would recognize him as a man of decided ability, deep study, 
thoroughly prepared for the work he had in hand, wholly absorbed in 
his case, but otherwise not presenting a very imposing appearance. 
One who first saw Brady thus engaged would be struck with his dignified 
and commanding appearance; attention would be at once riveted upon his 
massive head. He possessed a striking figure, which would comrnand 
attention anywhere. His serene and captivating manner would indicate 
anxiety as to the result, and determination to do everything in human, 
or legal power to achieve a victory for his client. Their habits in respect 
to preparation for trial presented an extraordinary contrast. Mr. O’Con¬ 
nor spared no labor in the preparation; all the work was performed or 
supervised by him, even to the smallest detail. Nothing could exceed 
the thoroughness of his preparation upon the law and the facts. It 
seemed almost impossible that any other lawyer could prepare as thor¬ 
oughly as he did. Mr. Brady’s habits were the reverse; he went to the 
very opposite extreme. In the early part of his professional career, it 
was said, he was quite studious. But afterwards,, especially during the 
last twenty years of his life (He died in 1869 when 54 years of age), as a 
rule he made no preparation for trial. When consultations were appointed 
for those on his side of the ease, he failed to attend them, but on the 
morning of the commencement of the trial he promptly appeared in court. 
As soon as the trial had started he gave close attention. He was quite 
likely to learn, for the first time, something about the side he represented 
when the case was opened to the jury, by the attorney or the junior 
counsel associated with him. After the trial had progressed a little 
he would grasp, as if by intuition, the leading features and the turning 
points of the case; and anyone who did not know to the contrary would 
suppose that he had made as much preparation as Mr. O’Conor before 
trial. Mr. O’Conor succeeded by reason of his almost superhuman 
assiduity in preparing his case. Mr. Brady succeeded in spite of his 
indolence and lack of preparation. Mr. O’Conor was a good speaker; 
Mr. Brady was a born orator. In address,—as to juries and public 
assemblages the one was powerful; the other was magnetic. In public 
addresses, when Mr. O’Conor closed, the audience woifid, with consider¬ 
able enthusiasm, applaud. When Mr. Brady wound up his speech, the 
entire audience would yell, ‘Go on! go on!’ and continue to yell so long as 
there was the faintest possibility that their demands might be complied 
with. In large political meetings, when Brady was to speak, the managers 
would put him down as the last speaker in order to hold the audience; 
for the vast crowds assembled would wait to hear Brady if they had to 
remain all night. He was the pet and idol of the Bar, as well as of public 
assemblies.”— Extraordinary Cases,’ by Henry L. Clinton, — 8If-6. 

A LOVER OF LITERATURE 

“In the midst of the most engrossing career, Mr. Brady found time 
to indulge his literary tastes. He submitted to the most laborious and 
persevering process of private study. Among his table books,were the 
works of Atterbury, Steele, Swift, Burke, Fenelon, Halifax, and Berkley. 
He read critically Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides,—the three great 
Greek dramatic writers whom the Alexandrine critics regarded as the 
foundation of the Greek literature.” 

—From T. B. Proctor’s Sketch of Brady,—^ Bench and Bar of New 

York,’ 266-9. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


79 


NICHOLAS HILL ON BRADY 

“Brady’s arguments gave me more trouble and annoyance and caused 
me to study my cases more searchingly and closely than did those of any 
other lawyer against whom I have ever been pitted.” 

— Proctor's ^Bench and Bar of N. Y.,' 263. 

THE JUDGE REBUKED BRADY WHEN DRUNK ^ 

Brady entered the New York Appellate Court, to argue a case, which 
was announced, ‘ready,’ unrolling his papers, but so intoxicated that he 
could scarcely walk. The judge seeing his condition, said sharply: 

“Mr Brady, you are too drunk to argue a case in this court!” 

Brady still advanced towards the judge’s desk, still untying his papers. 
The judge again expostulated with him: 

“Mr. Brady, you are in too drunken a condition to try a case in this 
court!” 

At this, Brady began to withdraw, and ceased unwinding his papers, 
with the remark: 

“Say, Judge, that is the first correct decision you have given in a long , 
time.” / 

RETORT TO NICHOLAS HILL 

Said Hill, in reference to Brady’s habit of intemperance: 

“Betwixt Brady and brandy, there is but one letter; 

If Brady would take less brandy, it would be better.” 

Brady scratched his head a minute and retorted: 

“Betwixt Hill and hell, there is but one letter; 

If Hill were in hell, ’twould be much better.” 

THE SANDS OF LIFE 

Brady tried a case against one Bliss, as counsel for the other side, 
and the judge limited each to one hour’s talk, and timed each speaker with 
an hour-glass. Brady spoke first, and as the sands ran through the glass, 
he closed with an eloquent peroration. Mr. Bliss waxed so eloquent 
in reply that the judge forgot the time,—the sands ran through, and still 
he waxed eloquent. Finally Brady rose, but was not allowed to speak, 
so absorbed was the judge. He rose again, and getting the attention of 
the judge, reminded him that his opponent had run way over his time, 
and gave them this couplet: 

‘The sands of life have ceased to run, 

Yet endless Bliss has just begun.’ 

BRADY’S FIRST OFFICE,—A HAT STORE 

When Jas. T. Brady opened his office in New York, he took an office 
which used to be an old hat renovating establishment. One day, Brady 
heard a supposed client clambering up the stairs, and in came a would-be 
customer of the old hat-cleaner, and hat-blocker. Looking around 
in surprise, the stranger asked: “What do you sell here, sir?” “Block¬ 
heads,” replied Brady. “Well,” observed the intruder,—“I see you have 
one left yet.” 

— This was told the compiler of this work, by James A. Edgerley, 
of Somersworth, N. H., who said Brady told him this joke upon 
himself, and laughed heartly as he told it. Edgerley further said that 
phrenologists pronounced Brady's head, the most perfectly shaped, 
of any head they had ever known. 


80 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


A DESECRATED HEARTSTONE 

“I shall prove to you circumstances which, for a hundred years past, 
have been regarded as a justifiable retribution for domestic peace des¬ 
troyed, for hopes blasted, homes desecrated—all that the heart has gar¬ 
nered up as its last, its only solace, withered by some brilliant and in¬ 
sidious seducer, whom the arm of the law cannot reach. 

“Alas! that hearthstone was desecrated; the spoiler had been there. 
Where joy and brightness had reigned luxuriantly, were sorrow and gloom. 
That beautiful fabric of domestic love and tranquility was overwhelmed 
in ruin, and the ravens of despair were croaMng and gloating over 
the dark desolation. Gentlemen, what is home without its jewels, what 
is earth without its fiowers, what is heavven without its stars?” 

—Extract from the Sickles-Key murder trial at Washington, D. C., 
in allusion to Philip Barton Key despoiling the home of Daniel E. 
Sickles, the prisioner at the bar, 

REPLY TO BARKING DOG 

Once while in one of his oratorical fiights, he became violent in his tone 
and gestures, and a juror’s dog, which had been lying under his master’s 
chair, suddenly appeared and barked at the orator. As quick as a flash, 
Brady turned on the brute with: 

‘T am Sir Oracle, 

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!” 

WHEN THE ADVOCATE IS OF USE 

“The advocate is of very little use in the days of prosperity and peace 
in the periods of repose, in protecting your property, or aiding you to 
recover your rights of a civil nature. It is only when public opinion, 
or the strong power of government, the formidable array of a multitude 
is directed against you, that the advocate is of any use. 

“The struggles in the history of the world, to have in criminal trials 
an honest judiciary, a fearless jury, and a faithful advocate, disclose a 
great deal of wrong and suffering inflicted on advocates silenced by force, 
trembling at the bar where they ought to be utterly immovable in the 
discharge of their duty—on juries fined and imprisoned, and kept lying 
in dungeons for years because they dared, in state prosecutions, to find 
verdicts against the direction of the court. The provisions of our own 
Constitution, which secures to men trial by jury and all the rights inci¬ 
dent to that sacred and invaluable privilege, are the history of wrong 
against which those provisions are intended to guard in the future.” 
— Jas. T. Brady, in Defense of the Sava nnah Privateers, in Circuit 
Court of U, S., at N. Y. City, 1861. 


BARON BRAMWELL (1808-1892) England 

George William Wilshire 

SKETCH OF 

Born at Finch Lane, Cornwall, England. Was twenty years in Excheq¬ 
uer Division, where he made a great reputation. In all, he had 26 years 
experience on the English Bench. 

A COUNSEL’S DUTY TO DEFEND A BAD CAUSE 

“A man’s rights are to be determined by the court, not by his attorney 
or counsel. It is for the want of remembering this that foolish people object 
to lawyers that they will advocate a case against their own opinions. 
A client is entitled to say to his counsel, I want your advocacy, not your 
judgment; I prefer that of the court.” 


JURISPRUDENCE— 

“The science of jurisprudence—the pride of the human intellect, with 
all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reason of ages, 
combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of 
human conerns.” 


OPPOSED AND FINALLY DEFEATED THE FIELD CIVIL CODE 

“We have seen the press, the Bar of the State of N. Y., viewing with 
comparative unconcern the endeavor of a few men, it might almost be 
said, of one man, to abrogate our system of unwritten law, to discard 
the principles and methods from which it has sprung, and to substitute 
in its place a scheme of codification borrowed from the systems of despotic 
nations. * * * ^ew aspect now given to the argument is to 

lay down as its foundation, the proposition that human transactions, 
especially private transactions, can be governed only by the principles 
of justice; that these have an absolute existence, and cannot be made by 
human enactment; that they are wrapped up with the transactions 
which they regulate, and are discovered by subjecting those transactions 
to examination; and the law is consequently a science depending upon 
the observation of facts and not a contrivance to be established by 
legislation, that being a method directly antagonistic to science.” 

—Said hy James C. Carter in opposition to the Code, George Alfred 

Miller, Article 'Carter,’ 8 ‘Gt. Am. Lawyers.’ 18-22. 


LAWYER—WHEN A MECHANIC 

“A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic—a mere working 
mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call 
himself an architect.”— Sir Walter Scott in 'Guy Mannering.’ 

Scott began as a lawyer; born 1771, died 1832; made $400,000 by his 
writings— Author. ■ _ 

LAWYER’S STYLE 

“A lawyer should be able to scatter the flowers of polite literature 
over the thorny brakes of jurisprudence.”— Henry Hallam. 






LOUIS DEMBITZ BRANDEIS (1856- ), 

Washington, D. C. 

SOME ACCOUNT OF HIS CAREER 

Mr. Justice Brandeis, who has been on the U. S. Supreme Court Bench 
since June 5, 1916, at the appointment of President Woodrow Wil¬ 
son, Jan. 28, 1916, was born in Louisville, Ky., Nov. 13, 1856; was 
educated in the Louisville public and high, schools, and at Dresden, 
Germany; LL.B. of Harvard, 1877; honorary A. M., 1891; admitted to 
bar 1878; in the practice of the law, Boston, Mass., 1897-1916; member, 
Warren & Brandeis, 1879-97;—Brandeis, Dunbar & Nutter, 1897-1916. 
Counsel for Mr. Glavis in Ballinger-Pinchot investigation, before Inter- 
State Commerce Commission, in the 2nd. advance freight-rate case, 
1913-14; Special Counsel for the Government in Riggs Nat. Bk. case, 
1915; counsel for the people, in proceedings involving constitutionality 
of Ore. & Ill. women’s lO-hr. laws, Ohio 9-hr. law, Calif., 8-hr. law, 
Ore, minimum wage law 1907-14, and in preserving Boston municipal 
subways system, 1900-07, and the Mass. Savings Bk. Insurance, and also 
in opposing the New Haven monopoly of transportation in New England, 
1907-13; Chairman Arbitration Board N. Y. Garment Worker’s strike, 
1910; Chairman Provisional Committee for Zionist affairs, 1910-16; 
appointed U. S. Associate Justice, Jan. 18, 1916, and assumed office 
June 5, 1916. 

THE LAW AND THE PEOPLE 

“In the past the courts have reached their conclusions largely deduc¬ 
tively from preconceived notions and precedents, the method I have 
tried to employ in arguing cases has been inductive reasoning from the 
facts. In general I believe the courts and the people have been too far 
apart. There is no subject so complex that the people cannot be inter¬ 
ested in it, if pains enough be taken, and I believe that the common 
agreement of public sentiment should influence the court’s decision on 
many a question.” 

—Interview with Ernest Poole, American Magazine, March, 1911. 

WHY THE LAWYER AND PEOPLE ARE ESTRANGED 

“It is true that at the present time the lawyer does not hold that 
position with the people that he held fifty years ago, but the reason is 
not in my opinion, lack of opportunity. It is because, instead of holding 
a position of independence between the wealthy and the people,Jprepared 
to curb the excesses of either, the able lawyers have to a great extent 
allowed themselves to become an adjunct of the great corporations and 
have neglected their obligations to use their powers for the protection of 
the people.”— From an Address, in 1905. 

EDUCATE JUDGES 

“What we must do in America is not to attack our judges, but to 
educate them.”— Louis D. Brandeis. 


W. C. P. BRECKENRIDGE (1837-1904), Kentucky 

THE PILGRIMS 

“My countrymen: In the midst of fierce disputations, of trials and 
perils, there never was a moment when the heroic sacrifices, the devotion 
to truth, the fidelity to conviction, of those who landed not only at 
Plyrnouth, but at all points in New England, did not receive my hearty 
gratitude and cordial praise. We are the children of exiles and emigrants. 
We spring from the common root, and are of the same blood. Our fathers 
came for the same general purpose, and together won a common inde¬ 
pendence; and to-day, standing near where Elder Brewster and William 
Bradford, John Carver, and Miles Standish landed, I am as much at 
home as under the shadow of the monument which Massachusetts 
helped to build to Henry Clay. And when I project myself into the mighty 
and ever widening future with the ever increasing appHcation of truth 
to human institutions, I never attempt to separate what the sons of 
New England will do from that which Virginia’s and Kentucky’s sons 
may also do. 

‘In the name of God, Amen!’ 

“On the 21st day of November, 1620, in the cabin of the Mayflower^ as 
she lay at anchor in Provincetown Harbor, the compact signed by the adult 
males of that immortal ship’s company of exiles began with this solemn 
phrase—the formal, technical, habitual beginning of solemn instruments; 
and to-day, amid such different conditions, we repeat with intense and 
loving emphasis the old phrase, and load each word with gratitude and 
praise. As we gather to dedicate this monument to the memory of those 
illustrious forefathers, to the honor of their principles and convictions, to 
the grateful applause of all freemen for their labors and sacrifices, 
and ourselves and the future to the preservation and amplification of 
true liberty, we reverently—^like unto the statue of faith—uplift our 
faces and raise our hands to the unchanged heavens and the changeless 
Father, and solemnly repeat—^‘In the name of God, Amen!’ 

“It is not a mere fanciful conception that in this phrase hes the power 
which produces, and the seed from which sprung, the action of that 
company and the results thereof? It is, perhaps, true that he who drafted 
that instrument somewhat unconsciously and as a matter of common 
habit used that formal phrase with which it was then—even so now cus¬ 
tomary to open solemn instruments; and it may be further true that 
those who subscribed their names may not have felt any special thrill 
as these words were read aloud to them in the little cabin; and yet it 
is further true that this purpose—to do and to live ‘in the name of God’ 
—is the only possible, as it is the amply sufficient, explanation of all 
which preceded and all which has followed that act. It has been plaus- 
ably and eloquently urged that one of the honors to be given to these 
revered men is that they were ‘at the beginning’ of our institutions; 
and that they left behind them the old forms and institutions, based on 
new principles and protected by new and original government modes. 
This is a captivating picture and attracts the heart.” 

— W, C. P. Breckenridge, of Ky. Educated in Center College, Ky. 
and in the Law Department of the University of Louisville. Served 
ten years in Congress. 

The above speech was made in 1869, at the dedication of the National 
Monument to the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass. 


SIDNEY BREESE (1800-1878), Illinois 


DECISION MUST HAVE REASON BEHIND IT 

“The rule as laid down seems to me to be destitute of any good reason 
on which to base it, and altogether too technical for this age. How 
a scrawl made with a pen and ink affixed to the name of the writer 
of the letter which is the authority to execute the appeal bond, could 
give it any additional validity, I cannot discover. It is conceded, if the 
writer’s name had this magical scrawl affixed to it, it would then possess 
all the efficacy of a sealed instrument or deed.***I cannot consent to yield 
up my judgment, in any case, because others have decided a point in a 
particular manner, unless I can see the reason of the decision, seeing 
none in this case and believing that the purposes of justice are not aU 
subserved by an adherence to such antiquated rules and unmeaning 
technicalities, I dissent from the opinion. * * * Several of my brother 
Judges coincide in the view here expressed, but think the rule is the 
law, with which they cannot interfere, it being for the legislative power 
to change it. I think differently. I am of opinion that courts are 
bound to see the propriety and reason of every rule, before it receives 
their sanction and approbation, in cases wherein there are no statutory 
provisions applicable; in such cases the will of the legislature, as ex¬ 
pressed by them, is the law, however unwise or unreasonable it may be, if 
no constitutional provision is violated. Not so in other cases. We 
should know the reason why it is, and should be so; and if the alleged 
reason is absurd, we should not yield our acquiescence.” 

—Sidney Breese, IlL—in Mans v. Worthing, J III., 26 {ISIfl). 

In this case Abraham Lincoln moved to dismiss an appeal bond be¬ 
cause executed in the name of a surety by an attorney-in-fact; and the 
letter of attorney was not under seal. The Court sustained the motion 
and dismissed the appeal,—following Lincoln’s contention. “This 
case proves that Lincoln was no less inclined,” says John T. Richards 
in his recent book, ‘Abraham Lincoln,—the Lawyer-Statesman,’ at pages 
62-3, “to take advantage of a technical defense than any other member 
of the bar whenever the interest of his client seemed to justify that 
course • ”— Author. 

“Judge Breese was a man of great learning, in the best and broadest 
sense of that term. To the studies prescribed by the college of which 
he was a graduate (Union College, Schenectady, N. Y.) he added a life^ 
time of study. Notwithstanding his constant employment in public life, 
he found time for the study of the classics, both in Latin and English. 
After the close of the day, till late in the night, I have often known him, 
in his private room, before retiring, to spend hours upon standard works 
in literature and on scientific subjects. It was his constant habit. It is 
a marvel, the intellectual labor he could endure. His memory was 
remarkable, and suffered no failure in his last days.” 

—Judge John W. Scott, for years his associate on the Supreme 
Bench. 

CONSTRUCTIVE CONTEMPTS 

“Our Constitution has provided that the printing presses shall be free 
to every person who may undertake to examine the proceedings of any 
and every department of the government, and he may pubhsh the truth, 
if the matter published is proper for public information, and the free 
communication of thoughts and opinions is encouraged. ***An honest, 
independent and intelligent Court will win its way to public confidence, 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


85 


in spite of newspaper paragraphs, however pointed may be their wit or 
satire, and its dignity will suffer less by passing them unnoticed, than 
by arraigning the perpetrators, trying them in a summary way, and 
punishing them by the judgment of the offended party. 

“It does not seem to me necessary, for the protection of Courts in the 
exercise of their legitimate powers, that this one, so liable to abuse, should 
also be conceded to them. It may be so frequently exercised, as to 
destroy that moral influence which is their best possession, until finally 
the administration of Justice is brought into disrepute. Respect to 
Courts can not be compelled; it is the voluntary tribute of the public 
to worth, virtue and intelligence, and whilst they are found upon the 
judgment seat, so long, and no longer, will they retain the pubhc con¬ 
fidence. If a Judge be hbelled by the public press, he and his assailant 
should be placed on equal grounds, and the common arbiter should 
be a Jury of the Country; and if he has received an injury, ample re¬ 
muneration will be made.” 

—Sidney Breese^ in Stuart v. The People, 3 Scammon, 395. 

The Judge referred to the power to punish for contempt as “not a 
jewel of the Court, to be admired and prized, but a rod rather, and most 
potent when rarely used.” Judge Breese voiced the decision of the Supreme 
Court, but Judge Douglas dissented. 

EXPERT EVIDENCE 

“These doctors were summoned by the contestants, as ‘experts’ for 
the purpose of invahdating a will deliberately made by a man quite as 
competent as either of them to do such an act; they were the contestant’s 
witnesses, and so considered themselves. Dr. Basset especially, whose 
whole testimony is pregnant with such indications. The testimony 
of such is worth but little, and should always be received by Juries 
with great caution. It was said by a distinguished Judge, in a case before 
him, if there was any kind of testimony not only of no value, but even 
worse than that, it was, in his judgment, that of medical experts. They 
may be able to state the diagnosis of the disease more learnedly, but, 
upon the question whether it had at a given time, reached such a stage, 
that the subject of it was incapable of making a contract, or was irrespons¬ 
ible for his acts, the opinion of his neighbors, if men of good common sense, 
would be worth more than that of all the experts in the country.” 

—Sidney Breese,—in Rutherford v. Morris, 77 III. 397. 

• 

Only one member of the court concurred in this opinion; one dissented, 
one wrote a brief memo, concurring in the judgment and three filed 
separate opinions for reversal.— Author. 

HOW CITIES GET POWER TO ESTABLISH PARKS AND 
BOULEVARDS 

“The whole legislative power of the state, is conferred by the Con¬ 
stitution, upon the general assembly, composed of two houses, the mepi- 
bers of both to have certain qualifications and to be elected by the people. 
It follows, therefore, that every subject, not withdrawn from them by the 
Constitution, and which is within the scope of civil government, can be 
dealt with by that body and as it may act upon the state at large by 
general laws affecting the whole country and all the people, so it may, 
in its discretion, there being no prohibition expressly made, or neces¬ 
sarily implied, make special laws to relate only to separate districts or 
portions of the state. The members of the two houses are the Con¬ 
stitutional agents of the public will in every district or locality of the 
state, and they may, therefore, so arrange the powers to be given and 


86 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


executed therein, as convenience, the efficiency of administration, and 
the public good may seem to require, by committing some functions to 
local jurisdictions already established, or by establishing local juris¬ 
dictions for that express purpose.” 

—Sidney Breese,—in People v. Mayor of Chicago, 51 III. 17; People 
V. Solomon, 51. III. 

Said the late E. B. Washburne; ‘‘There is not a man in the State who 
knows so much of its early history as Judge Breese. No man living 
there has been so thoroughly identified with all its history; has been 
so much a part of it, and who at the Bar, in the Senate House and on the 
Bench has so long and so ably illustrated its annals. The Reports of 
the Supreme Court attest his profound knowledge of the law, the vigor 
of his intellect, the ripeness of his scholarship, and the peculiar grace of his 
diction. No Judge who ever sat on the Bench could touch the very 
heart and soul of a law suit with more unerring certainty; and his opinions 
will live as long as the jurisdiction of the State shall exist.” 

—^ Great American Lawyers, Jf91. He loas a member of the Supreme 
Court of Illinois for 21 years. 

JUDGE BREESE’S OPINION OP LINCOLN 

‘‘Mr. Lincoln was never found deficient in all the knowledge requisite 
to represent the strong points of his case to the best advantage, and by 
his searching analysis make clear the most intricate controversy. There 
was that within him glowing in his mind, which enabled him to impress 
with the force of his logic, his own clear perception upon the minds of 
those he sought to infiuence.” 

‘‘For my single self, I have for a quarter of a century regarded Mr. 
Lincoln as the finest lawyer I ever knew.” 

RAILROAD CO. IS LIABLE IN DAMAGES FOR NEGLIGENCE 

OP EMPLOYEES 

‘‘The plea is set up by the defendant (C. B. & Q. R. R.) for the refusal 
is so absurd as to be unworthy of notice, any further than to stamp it 
as unworthy of civilized and Christian men. They had no right, for¬ 
sooth, to enter upon the premises for such a purpose. Has it come to 
this, that citizens of this Commonwealth are not permitted to enter 
the premises of another, whose house or barn is on fire, to extinguish the 
flames? Is any license necessary for a purpose so benevolent? Would 
not savages, prompted by their own instinct rush to the rescue of property 
so endangered? It is sad and humiliating to contemplate the fact, that 
employees of a railroad company acting under a charter granted by this 
State, should be so lost to all the calls of benevolence and kindness— 
to all the common instincts of the most ordinary humanity, as to refuse 
to aid in extinguishing a fire, which their own employees, by their neg¬ 
ligence, had originated, which threatened the destruction of valuable 
property, and which they had the power to prevent. We are shocked 
at the exhibition of such heartless, such criminal indifference, and can 
find no apology for it,” 

— Judge Sidney Breese in Bass v. Chicago, Burlington and Quincy 
Railroad. 

In this case, the Company’s employees, present at the fire and knowing 
its origin to be attributable to sparks escaping from a locomotive, made 
no effort to extinguish it. 


DAVID J. BREWER (1837-1900), Kansas 

A COURT OF EQUITY 

“The powers and processes of a Court of Equity are equal to any and 
every emergency. They are potent to protect the humblest individual 
from the oppression of the mightiest corporation; to protect every corpor¬ 
ation from the destroying greed of the public; to stop State or Nation from 
spoliating or destroying private rights; to grasp with strong hand every 
corporation, and compel it to perform its contracts of every nature, and 
do justice to every individual.”— Mr. Justice D. J. Brewer in the Omaha 
Bridge Case. 

Mr. Brewer’s mother was a sister of David Dudley Field, Stephen J. 
Field and Cyrus W. Field. He was noted for his great learning, ability 
and fairness of judgment. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of 
the U. S., in 1889, and continued on the bench for twenty-nine years until 
his death.— Author. 

ORATORY 

“Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, 
achitecture, please, thrill, inspire; but oratory rules. The orator dominates 
thofie who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, 
compels their action.” 

INCOMPETENT EVIDENCE NOT ADMITTED, AND THE RE¬ 
SULT WHICH HAPPENED AFTER SIX YEARS 

Judge Brewer used to relate an incident, which happened in his court, 
while on the United States District Bench, which was this: 

A case was being tried in his court, and a question was asked by plain¬ 
tiff’s counsel of one of his witnesses of doubtful competency; defendant’s 
counsel objected, and Brewer, as judge ruled that the testimony was 
incompetent. As plaintiff was relying upon this testimony as the pivotal 
point in his case, he then and there took exceptions, and went to the 
Supreme Court of the United States, upon that point alone. That 
Court, ruled that the testimony should have been allowed to go to the 
jury, and remanded the case for a new trial, in accordance with their 
finding. After six years the ease came on for hearing in his court, for the 
second time; the same question was asked, of the same witness, and he 
answered he did not know. And this ended the case. 

THE LAWYER 

“I can say that for over thirty years I have been a judge, and of the 
many thousands of lawyers who have appeared before me I have never 
found but a single one upon whose word I could not depend. While 
other professions and vocations are constantly putting on striped clothes, 
how seldom does any lawyer respond to a warden’s caU. * * * Blot 

from American history the lawyer and all that he has done and you will 
rob it of more than half its glory. Remove from our society today the 
lawyer, with the work that he does, and you will leave that society as 
dry and shifting as the sands that sweep over Sahara.” 

_ Address to the Law Students of Maryland University, 1896. 


I 


BENJAMIN H. BREWSTER (1816-1888), Pennsylvania 

ART CANNOT ALONE MAKE A PEOPLE HAPPY 

“Greece, Rome, Gothic and Arabic Europe, in all their sublimity and 
splendor of architecture and artistic decorations, are deserted by men 
suffering with want, and out of whom the necessities of life eat all con¬ 
sciousness of their influence. * * * The possession of creations of 

art will not alone make us good and happy. The public moral sense 
that precedes their production and demands their creation is the only 
true test of thdr usefulness and fitness; and even then, if we degenerate 
and become sensuous, and voluptuary, and ostentatious, and full of 
folly, then their presence will only gratify a half-animal, half-intellectual 
passion, but it will not excite that joy which, like ‘the joy of the drawing 
of waters,’ exceeds all other joys, the joy of a serene moral nature, tranquil 
and content, because its aim is above self, and its object is the good of 
all, and its means natural and truthful.” 

— Benj. H. Brewster, from an Address to the Fairmount Park Ass'n, 
Philadelphia, Pa., 1872. 

BREWSTER ON HAMILTON 

“Alexander Hamilton is the glory of this nation. Jurists, Statesmen 
and philosophers of all nations will honor and reverence his name. He 
will be ranked with the greatest and wisest of law-givers and philosophers. 
Solon and Lycurgus and Aristotle could have sat down with him amd found 
in him a kindred spirit. * * * At twenty-three he laid before James 

Duane, a member of Congress from New York, his plan for organizing 
the government of this people on a firm and stable foundation. He had 
at that early age fathomed the whole subject, and with a^ force of reason 
that was his great gift, he set forth in clear and well-chosen words the 
public wants of the confederated colonies. It was the first draft of a 
great Title Deed conveying supreme popular power to a government 
created by the people for the public good. I do not use an exaggerated 
expression when I say that it was an astonishing work of knowledge, 
wisdom and genius. It is an unexampled document. There is not another 
like it in the records of this world’s history, and by a youth of twenty- 
three years! * * * Washington, FranMin, Hamilton, a conjunction 

of human greatness, human wisdom, and human genius never before so 
united.” 

—From an Address on Hamilton, upon the erection of Hamilton's 
statue, at Central Park, N. Y., Nov. 22, 1880. 

GENIUS 

“Genius—that which men call genius—the dazzling results of irregular 
and bewildered intellects, the sensuous thoughts of voluptuous men, 
can intoxicate and degrade, can enchant and enervate; but it cannot 
profit and exalt, it cannot give content to life, or confidence to death. 
Human nature is prone to ennoble those who are inspired with the dan¬ 
gerous gift of genius; few who are endowed with it are fit to use it. It 
would seem almost as if they were blemished with defects and stained 
with vices lest mankind should worship them.” 

FAME 

“If you wish to know what public fame is, remember that the long line 
of Roman consuls and Grecian magistrates is now forgotten, while 



GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


89 


Aesop, the slave, Socrates, the mechanic, and Horace, the son of a freed- 
man, are immortal.” 

PERSONAL DISFIGUREMENT 

A Philadelphia lawyer, in an address to the jury, referred to Mr. 
Brewster’s disfigurement. Mr. Brewster replied: 

“When I was a baby I was a beautiful blue-eyed child. I know this, 
because my dear dead mother told me so; but a careless nurse let me fall 
into the fire, and when I was picked up from the burning coals, my face 
was as black as the heart of the scoundrel who has referred to my dis¬ 
figurement here.” 

EMORY A. STORRS ON BREWSTER 

“The greatest lawyer in the country, greater than William M. Evarts.” 
A LAWYER’S START AND ENDING 

^ “The lawyer starts life giving $500 worth of law for $5, and ends by 
giving $5 worth for $500.”— Brewster^s Life, hy Savage, 38. 

HUMAN THOUGHTS 

“The highest works of human skill and human thought outlive through 
ages the creatures that produced them.” 

—Address at a New Jersey College, 1853. 

THE STUDY OF LETTERS 

“The study of letters is the only true consolation in adversity and the 
only embelhshment of a prosperous and happy life.”— Brewster. 

CHURCH AND STATE 

“No political organization shall receive my support that will subject 
citizens to a religious test. I will not consent to do anything that can 
be construed into acquiescence in opinions, political opinions, that would 
invade the right of private judgment and the hberty of conscience; 
and because I am a protestant I hold it to be my duty to give my testimony 
in favor of religious hberty and against intolerance. In my judgment it 
is the right of all men, as men, to think and speak as they please upon the 
subject of their religion, being responsible to God alone for their thoughts 
or words, and every attempt to deprive them of their civil rights because 
of those opinions would be an act of injustice and a great public crime.” 

— Savidge's ^Life of Brewster f 81. 

POLITICS 

“All the world over the trade of a politician is the occupation of a 
gamester; it is the business of a man whose time is spent in every strife. 

* * * A life well spent in the pursuit of almost any calling will yield 

you a better income and give you an independence of position and a 
manly dignity of character that no office can secure for you. * * * 

The shores of political life are strewn with wrecks and some of them were 
rich argosies. The highest public distinction in this country can have 
no attractions for right minded men unless they are the unsought reward 
of personal worth, dignity of character, mental ability and a blameless 
life—obtained in any other way they disgrace those who hold them.” 

— Savidge’s ''Life of Brewster,^ 77. 

Said by Brewster because cheated out of U. S. Attorney-Generalship by 
Geo. M. Dallas’ infiuence with President Polk.— Author. 


JAMES 0. BROADHEAD (1819-1898), Missouri 

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW 

* “There is a law that does not change; the law of the land which recog¬ 
nizes the doctrine that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or proper¬ 
ty without due process of law. That is unchangeable and eternal. It 
qualifies the authority of legislators, it limits the jurisdiction of courts; 
it stands as a sentinel to guard the approach of arbitrary power over 
individual liberty everywhere throughout this land. Whencesoever it 
came, whether from the barons of Runnymede or from the forests of 
Germany, or from the teachings of Greek philosophers of an early age, 
it has found its way here and in this country has become the foundation 
stone of our political fabric.” 

—From argument in the U. Si Supreme Court, in United States 
V. The Mormon Church, 136, Ij^-O and 150 U. S. Reports. 

PRACTICING LAW—A SCHOOL 

“The school of the practical lawyer enables him to acquire a practical 
acquaintance with human nature in all its multiple phases. He may 
learn what weakness may be pardoned; what excesses of passion may be 
condoned. He may learn that there are in most instances two sides to 
every case. How apparent violations of right may be explained. How 
little difference there is in the great mass of human beings, and what 
are the secret springs of human actions which are hidden from the out¬ 
side world, and he is, therefore, less disposed to form a rash judgment 
of human actions. It belongs to the members of the legal profession to 
study the rights of individuals in their various relations to each other 
and to the state, and to see that they are secured by a just administration 
of the law. To do this demands as well a thorough knowledge of the 
principles of jurisprudence as taught by the masters of the profession, 
the special enactments of legislators, and the origin of customs which 
have ripened into laws by the judgment of competent tribunals, not, 
however, by too much reading, but by much reflection and reasoning 
upon what the law should be in a given case, as also the relations of the 
different members of society to each other, the various industries which 
become subjects of contracts, the products of human genius which in 
the progress of a rapid civilization have developed new industries, and 
to what extent they have changed former conditions, and in all legal 
controversies in which they may be concerned to make a fair and honest 
presentation of the law and facts before the court, and above all things 
to avoid the stirring up of litigation, and when consulted by a client to 
counsel the settlement of a controversy without litigation if it is deemed 
advisable to do so, under all circumstances, as an officer of the court, 
to have the courage to defend the right, however it may be assailed, 
whether by the voice of the multitude or the despotism of a single in¬ 
dividual clothed with official power.”— James 0. Broadhead. 

Samuel T. Glover, when asked his estimate of Broadhead, replied: 
“A great lawyer; a great man. A very great lawyer; a very great man— 
when awake.” (That is he possessed great reserve power.) 

Says James Hagerman, his biographer in ‘Great American Lawyers,’ 
Vol. 7, p. 308: “He was not unlike the Mississippi on whose banks he 
dwelt, which moving steadily on, sometimes at a lower and sometimes 
a higher stage, anon bursting its bounds and fertilizing all it touches, 
then returning to its channel, continues its majestic march to the sea.” 


SIR HENRY BROUGHAM (1778-1868), England 


HABIT 

“I trust everything under God to habit, upon which, in all ages, the 
law-giver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance; 
habits which make everything easy, and cast all difficulties upon the 
deviation from a wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance 
will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and proffigacy will be as contrary 
to the child or adult, as the most atrocious crime to any of us.” 

—Sir Henry Brougham. 

SCHOLARSHIP 

“Let the soldier be abroad if he will; he can do nothing in this age. 
There is another personage abroad, a person less imposing, in the eyes 
of some perhaps, insignificient. The schoolmaster is abroad; and I 
trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military 
array.”— Sir Henry Brougham. 

“Strange fellow! His powers gone. His spirit immortal. A dead 
nettle.”— said Thos. B. Macaulay. 

The above passage is from a speech in the House of Commons, Jan. 
29, 1828. 

DEFINITION OF A LAWYER 

“A lawyer is a learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your 
enemies and keeps it himself.”— Sir Henry Brougham. 

LORD BROUGHAM’S LEARNING 

“There go Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes, Sir Isaac 
Newton, Lord Chesterfield and a great many others, in one post-chaise.” 

—Samuel Rogers, as he saw Brougham’s carriage drive hy. 

O’CONNELL ON BROUGHAM 

“If Brougham knew a little law, he would know a little of everything.” 

OUTBURSTS IN DEFENSE OF QUEEN CAROLINE 

When the miserable King George IV was on the throne, he tried to 
get through Parliament a bill of divorce against his wife. Queen Caroline; 
had in fact been married to another woman, Mrs. Fitzherbert, before he 
ascended the throne, and as she was a Roman Catholic he had, by the 
law of England forfeited his title to the Kingship. The fact of his prior 
marriage was a secret, known to but few, had been faithfully kept, and 
the rascally husband had been allowed to ascend the throne and marry 
Caroline, in the behef that a marriage, which under oath he denied, 
would never be proved against him. He was thus a bigamist and a 
perjurer. During the trial in Parliament, Queen Caroline’s counsel. 
Brougham and Denman, were given the proofs of the first marriage, 
and thus fortified, caused it to be intimated to the King’s counsel, that 
if the trial were proceeded with, they would prove the bigamy and dispute 
his title. For a while it was supposed that they would not have the courage 
to carry out their threat. Brougham dissipated that hope by an immortal 


92 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


utterance, during one of his speeches in his client’s defense. After the 
use of language which to those who knew the secret, showed that he was 
referring to it, he stated that he would conceive Mmself bound not to 
make public, if the bill was not pressed, otherwise he would. Then 
came the statement of a counsel’s duty, in words that will remain imperish¬ 
able, words that nerved many a counsel to his duty in the face of adverse 
opinion. 

“And let it not be thought, my lords, that if either now I did conceive, 
or if hereafter I should so far be disappointed in my expectation that the 
case against me will fail, as to feel it necessary to exercise that right— 
let no man vainly suppose, that not only I, but that any, the youngest 
member of the profession would hesitate one monemt in the fearless 
discharge of his paramount duty. I once took leave to rernind your 
lordships, which was unnecessary, but there are many whom it may be 
needful to remind, that an advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes 
his client, knows in the discharge of that office, but one person in the 
world, that client and none other. To save that client all expedient means, 
to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among 
others to himseK, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; 
and he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the de¬ 
struction, which he may bring upon another. Nay, separating even the 
duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need 
be, to the wind, he must go on reckless of the consequences, if his fate 
should unhappily be, to involve his country in confusion for his client’s 
protection.”— In defense of Queen Caroline, in 1820. 

Says John Brooks Leavitt, in his Yale Lectures 1910: “This (the 
above) deliverance has sometimes been claimed to mean that in the service 
of his client, a lawyer should not hesitate to commit any wrong. If 
that were so, then the utterance would be infamous. Nothing of the sort 
was in Brougham’s mind, as anyone will discover on reading his own 
account of the circumstances under which it was made. The suggestion 
is an insult to his memory. An honorable man will not take dishonorable 
means to win a client’s case, whether criminal or civil.” 

Henry Brougham; English Lord Chancellor. Born in Edinburgh, Scot¬ 
land; admitted to Scottish bar, 1800; co-operated in founding the Edin¬ 
burgh Review, 1802, and contributed 80 articles to first 20 numbers; 
entered Lincoln’s Inn, 1803; Parliament, 1810; Lord Chancellor, 1830-34. 
He was versatile, egotistical, turbulent, vain and rash.— Author. 

DEFENSE OF AMBROSE WILLIAMS FOR LIBEL 

Brougham’s defense of Williams, in 1821, for a libel against ‘The 
Clergy, residing in and near the City of Durham,’ nearly equals his 
oratorical effort in defense of Queen Caroline. When the Queen died in 
1821, the bells in nearly all the churches of England were tolled out of 
respect to her memory; those of Durham only remaining silent. Upon 
this silence, Mr. Williams, who was editor of a newspaper in Durham, 
commented with some severity, and was, therefore, indicted for libel. 
Scarlett prosecuted, and Brougham defended. In opening, Scarlett 
had expressed regret that the clergy had not the power of defending 
themselves through the public press. To this Brougham replied that they 
had, in fact, largely used it, and “Scurrously and foully libelled” the 
defendant. 

“Not that they wound deeply or injure much; but that is no fault of 
theirs: without hurting, they give trouble and discomfort. The insect 
brought into life by corruption, and nestled in filth, though its flight be low¬ 
ly and its sting puny, can swarm and buzz and irritate the skin and offend 
the nostril, and altogether give us nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, 
whose nobler nature it aspires to emulate. These reverend slanderers. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


93 


these pious backbiters, devoid of force to wield the sword, snatch the 
dagger; and destitute of wit to point or barb it, and make it rankle in 
the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch.” 

Sidney Smith, seeing Brougham drive by in his carriage, with the letter 
‘B’ on the panel, remarked: “There goes a carriage with a ‘B’ (bee) 
outside, and a wasp inside.” 

BROUGHAM’S CHARACTERIZATION OF ROMILLY 

“The observer who gazes upon the character of this great man is natur¬ 
ally struck first of all with its most prominent feature, and that is the rare 
excellence which we have now marked, so far above every gift of the under¬ 
standing, and which throws the lustre of mere genius into the shade. 
An extraordinary reach of thought; great powers of attention and of 
close reasoning; a memory quick and retentive; a fancy eminently brilliant, 
but kept in perfect discipline by his judgment and his taste, which was 
nice, cultivated, and severe, without any of the squeamishness so fatal to 
vigor, these were the qualities which, under the guidance of the most 
persevering industry, and with the stimulus of a lofty ambition, rendered 
him unquestionably the first advocate, and the most profound lawyer, 
of the age he flourished in; placed him among the ornaments of the Senate; 
and would, in all likelihood, have given him the foremost place among 
them all, had not the occupations of a laborious profession necessarily 
engrossed a disproportionate share of his attention, and made political 
pursuits fill a subordinate place in the scheme of his life.” 

—Said of Romilly, hy Lord Brougham, in his Historical Sketches 
of Statesmen.'' Vol. 1, p. 250. 


THOMAS DENMAN SAVED DANIEL O’CONNELL 

Thomas Denman, as one of the Law Lords, voted in favor of Daniel 
O’Connell’s appeal from the Irish Court in 1844. Which consisted of 
Chief Justice Pennefather and three puisne judges—Burton, Crampton 
and Perrin, and by a jury of twelve, found him guilty of a conspiracy 
to raise sedition, etc., and for which he was sentenced by Mr. Justice 
Burton to imprisonment for twelve months, a fine of 2,000 pounds, and 
security in 5,000 pounds, his own and another’s, for his good behavior 
during seven years—was effective before the House of Lords, five Law 
Lords deciding the case—Lyndhurst the Chancellor, Brougham, and 
Cottinham, ex-Chancellors, Campbell, ex-Chancellor for Ireland, and 
Denman, Lord Chief Justice. The first four were equally divided. 
Denman, indignant at the incompleteness of the jury panel below, 
turned the scale in favor of quashing the whole proceedings. If the 
omission of sixty names was immaterial, he said, why should not the 
sheriff have been at liberty to add sixty names? The persons who had 
tried O’Connell were not truly jurors at all. If sheriffs were to do their 
duty thus, then trial by jury was a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. 

* * * Denman held, in review in the House of Lords, that the jury which 
tried O’Connell was not such a jury as he was legally entitled to, and 
so the whole proceeding fell to the ground; and that some counts of the 
indictment were bad in law. but the Court in Dublin awarded the punish¬ 
ment on those, as well as the rest, from the impossibility of dividing or 
apportioning it, or of discovering how much of it belonged to one set of 
counts, how much to the other; and so it follows that the whole must 
fall 

—Hamilton's “Life of O'Connell,'' 176; and 6 Campbell's “Life of 
the Chief Justices," 150. 



DAVID PAUL BROWN (1795-1872), Pennsylvania 

THE STORM AND ZEPHYR—CONTRASTED 

“It is easy to scorn the tempest while sporting with the zephyr; to 
expatiate upon the harmlessness of ice, while indulging in it, perhaps 
as a luxury; or to underrate famine in the abundance of your supplies; 
but may that power that ‘rides on the whirlwind and directs the storrn’ 
protect you against the sad reality of those afflictions which in their 
mere theory are often so readily overcome by your self-secure, cold¬ 
blooded and reckless philosophy. Philosophy readily triumphs over 
past and future and remote ills; but present ills grapple closely with the 
heart, and triumph over philosophy.” 

David Paul Brown’s income as a lawyer, from early manhood to his 
77th year, exceeded $250,000,—the first fifteen years they were $100,000. 
Says John W. Forney: “As a criminal lawyer he had few equals.” _He 
wrote in 1856, ‘The Forum, or Forty Years Full Practice at the Phila¬ 
delphia Bar,” in 2 volumes. The above extract is from his argument, 
in defense of Alexander W. Holmes for manslaughter, in throwing over¬ 
board 16 passengers to save a sinking ship. Holmes being one of the 
crew, tried in U. S. Circuit, at Phila., United States v. Holmes, 1 Wall., 
Jr., 1 (1842). Defendant was convicted and sentenced to six months’ 
imprisonment at hard labor, and to pay a fine of $20. 

SURMOUNTING DIFFICULTIES MAKE MEN GREAT 

“But we are told by these learned Thebans—and that too with a sneer— 
that we pursue a system laid down by one Sam Thomson, who sprung 
from an obscure corner of the State of Massachusetts, and whose father 
was a farmer. Why, gentlemen, who was it that shed the brightest 
lustre upon the vast science of astronomy? One Dave Rittenhouse, 
a native of Pennsylvania, who followed the plough. Who was it that 
tore the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants? One 
Ben Franklin, a printer’s boy, who protected himself against the inclem¬ 
ency of the winter by exercise alone, and lived upon a single roll of bread 
a day. Who was it, when the veteran armies of Great Britain faltered and 
fied in the Indian war, safely conducted the retreat, and secured the 
remnant of the army, though he had ‘never set a squadron in the field, 
nor the division of a battle knew, more than a spinster?’ One George 
Washington, a Virginia planter. Who was it that shed the brightest 
halo around the brightest reign that the world ever knew, the reign 
of Elizabeth, the age of the Raleighs, the Burleighs, the Bacons and the 
Sydneys ? Why it was one Ben Jonson, a quandam apprentice to a brick¬ 
layer; and one William Shakespeare, a peasant boy, and shrewdly suspect¬ 
ed of poaching upon his neighbor’s deer. Or passing from astronomy, 
philosophy and poetry, to law; who was it that rose from low beginnings 
to be Lord Chief Justice of England? One Charley Abbot, whose father 
was a barber. Who was it that rose to be Lord High Chancellor of Eng¬ 
land? One Jack Copley, whose father was an American painter. Who 
was it that became the brightest star in the judicial constellation of Great 
Britain? One Phil Yorke, whose father no man knew. Or passing to a 
still further illustration. Who was it that subjugated three-fourths of 
Europe, and confident against the world in arms, made the autocrat of 
all the Russias tremble upon his throne? One Napoleon, who rose from 
the station of a corporal to such consummate power, to such dazzling 
heights, as to enable him to look down upon emperors, kings, princes, 
and the potentates of the earth, while he unmade them. Let us hear, 
therefore, no more of Sam Thomson, for altho I do not mean to say that there 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


95 


never was a great man among the ‘wealthy, curled darlings of the nation,’ 
yet I do mean to say, and all history sustains the assertion, that luxury 
and affluence are calculated to enfeeble the mind, and that those, there¬ 
fore, who are great in despite of them, would probably be much greater 
if removed from their influence. It is a well known fact among gentlemen 
of the turf, that blooded horses, which for years have been permitted to 
browse and career on broken and irregular mountain pastures, have 
acquired a much greater muscular strength, and in sportsman’s phrase, 
better bottom, than those fed upon a level surface; the application of 
this, altho a physical illustration, is not difficult. Men whose lives have 
been an interrupted course of difficulty, a perfect up-hill work, acquire in 
time a self-dependence, a self-sufficiency, and a promptitude in every 
emergency, which those that have been accustomed to stand for fame 
on their forefather’s feet, or to lean for pleasure upon another’s breast, 
never have known and never can know.” 

—From argument to the Jury, in Dr. Frost's case, for manslaughter; 
a contest between two rival systems of medicine; tried in 1837. Verdict, 
^Guilty;' hut prisoner was allowed to go free, on motion in arrest of 
judgment. 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE WRITTEN AND THE 

SPOKEN WORD 

“We are well aware, that a speech in type is a very different matter 
from a speech delivered. If Patrick Henry’s fame depended upon the 
report of his speeches, instead of the effects which they produced, we should 
be at a loss to conceive how he could have acquired such deathless renown. 
This difference is attributable to various causes, combining to produce 
dramatic effect. The court, the jury, the issue, the surrounding populace, 
the interest of the contending parties and their respective friends, the 
presence of the bar, the natural excitement of the occasion, all tend to 
impart animation and vigor to a speech, and to confirm the sentiment 
of Cicero, that ‘no man is an orator without a multitude.’ Action, which 
is said to be the essence of oratory, is utterly wanting. The impassioned 
declamations, the varied tones of the voice, the fixed and penetrating eye, 
the spirit that displays itself ‘from every joint and motive of the body,’ 
are neither to be appreciated nor imagined. To be understood, to be 
felt, they must be seen and heard. Still, as we cannot revive the dead, 
their past works must speak for them.”— The Forum, Vol. 1, pp. If59-60. 

SHAKESPEARE 

Will not a man who has a delusion gambol from his subjects; mis¬ 
conceive or misrepresent what he has done or said, just before? Yes, 
that is considered the great test. Sirs, no physician ever supplied that 
test. Shakespeare supplied that test;—a man whose mind embraced 
all things—whose genius pervaded everything,—who was a better 
chemist—a better metaphysician—a better lawyer—a better doctor 
—a better gardener—a better everything than almost any man,—nay 
not almost, that is short justice,— than any other man. What does 
he say? He gives two tests. I will not go to Horace, for he is not fit 
to hold a candle to Shakespeare. He gives you two tests.. The first is, 
quickness of pulse. Hamlet’s mother plays the same prank that is played 
here, and sends her son—not to the asylum, but to England—for his 
insanity. See how he answers when accused by his mother, of ecstacy— 
which signifies insanity— 

‘‘Ecstacy! 

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time. 


96 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


And makes a healthful music, it is not madness, 

That I have uttered: bring me to the test, 

And I the matter will reward; which madness 
Would gambol from.” 

Two of the best tests known to metaphysicians — one a strictly medical 
test—the great excitement of the pulse—the other re-wording of the 
matter. And sir, there is a remarkable case—which I know your honor 
will take pleasure in referring to, or in allowing me to refer—related^ by 
Sir Henry Halford, physician to George III, and the head of the medical 
faculty, at one time, throughout the world. He tells you that he would 
have been able to detect insanity, if he had not apphed the test that 
Shakespeare gives. He begins it, by the by, with this very quotation 
from Shakespeare.” 

SHAKESPEARE’S KING LEAR 

“The most clear, simple, and beautiful illustration df the doctrine 
for which we contend—and it is marvellous that it was overlooked by 
the learned gentleman—is derived from the loftiest human intellect the 
world ever knew, and presented in the insanity of Eung Lear; to which, 
at the risk of being considered too poetical, and too enthusiastic in my 
admiration of the author, I shall take leave to refer. There are two books 
which I shall never be afraid or ashamed to quote, and which are worth 
more than all the authorities—whether hound in calf or lined with calf— 
that have ever been arrayed in support of the prosecution. The first 
is the Bible—the foundation of our eternal hopes: the second is Shakes¬ 
peare—the great expounder of all the springs and motives of human 
action. 

“The earliest indication of the approaching mental infirmity of the 
aged king is in the interview with his daughters, in which he discards 
Cordelia from his heart, from her supposed want of filial affection; and 
then divides his kingdom between Goneril and Ragan, as a reward for 
their professions of devoted love. When, subsequently, these ungrateful 
daughters lop off their father’s retainers,—abridge his comforts,—deny 
his authority,—and punish his friends, then it is that the whole current 
of his feelings, or his passions, is turned back upon itself; and his insanity 
is displayed more fully than as originally exhibited. He becomes, then, 
a monomaniac, under the direct influence of the rebellion of his children; 
the unexpected discovery of which is the immediate and exciting cause. 
We have neither time, nor disposition, minutely to trace the progress of 
his mental alienation; but in support of the theory assumed in this part 
of our argument, and in refutation of the fallacies of the commonwealth, 
let us refer to the language while indulging in his maniacal ravings, 
and when exposed to the pitiless storm. 

“‘Spit fire! spout rain! 

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters', 

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness, 

1 never gave you kindgom, calVd you children'. 

You owe me no subscription; why then let fall 
Your horrible pleasure;—here I stand your slave, 

A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:— 

But yet 1 call you servile ministers. 

That have with two pernicious daughters joined 
Your high engender’d battles, ’gainst a head 
So old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul!’ 

“What say our learned friends now? Do they maintain that there can 
be no illusion growing out of facts? Do they say that there can be no 
reason in madness? ‘No matter and impertinency mixed?’ If they do 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


97 


they have my answer as thus derived from the knowledge of one whose 
authority has never been disputed.” 

—From speech in Smithes case. Brown was for the prisoner, Smith, 
charged with murder, tried in Philadelphia, Jan., 1858. The trial 
lasted two weeks, the defendant was acquitted. 

CHARACTER, REPUTATION, FAME 

“Character is always a good, and sometimes an only defense, in doubt¬ 
ful cases; and surely it is conceding enough to our opponents, to admit 
that this is a doubtful case. Character is a broad and secure shield, against 
which the pointless shafts of suspicion break themselves in vain. If the 
advantages of a spotless reputation be at all proportioned to the difficulties 
encountered in its acquisition, it may be confidently relied on. The 
attainment of character is an up-hill work; the ascent is difficult, laborious, 
and treacherous; but when we reach the glorious summit, after all our 
toils and perils past. Fame, with her own hand, arms us at all points in 
celestial panoply, which, hke the polished mirror, reflects without retain¬ 
ing, the calumny, reproaches, and odium that assail it. Reputation, it 
is true, may be gradually lost; its safeguards gradually impaired; but 
whatever may be the particular and hackneyed exceptions which human 
nature supplies, I hold it to be a well established rule, that it is never 
suddenly surrendered or abandoned, without some inducement or temp¬ 
tation, either actual or imaginary, commensurate with the importance 
of the sacrifice.” 

—From speech in the Chapman case, tried in Doylestown, Pa., 1832; 
Mrs Lucretai Chapman was tried for poisoning her husband, for 
murder, defended by Brown. She was acquitted. 

RIGHTS OF A DROWNING MAN AT SEA 

“Suppose two men, occupying perfectly friendly relations to each other, 
should be cast away, and both seize the same plank (to me the favorite 
illustration), and one should thrust the other off; would it not be mon¬ 
strous, upon the trial of the alleged offender, that the plank should be 
brought into court and submitted to some men of approved skill, and 
measured and examined by square, rule and compass—^its specific gravity 
ascertained, and the possibility of its sufficiency to sustain two men 
discussed and decided—and upon the basis of such calculation as that 
the prisoner should be deprived of his liberty or his life; when, if you had 
placed the witnesses in Ms precise situation, and they had been called 
upon to act upon a sudden emergency, they would have done percisely 
what he did and what every principle of natural law abundantly warrants. 
It is worse than idle to suppose that in such a critical juncture as this 
men are to cast lots or toss up for their lives. In such peril a man makes 
his own law with his own right arm. 

“But say the learned counsel, had the passengers been permitted to 
remain until morning they might have been saved by the Crescent. 
I answer, had they remained a single hour they would have never seen 
the morning—every man, woman and cMld would have weltered in the 
coral caves of the ocean. The approach of the Crescent could not, even 
in point of fact, have operated to alleviate their tears—without prescience, 
they could have anticipated no such relief. Men are to act upon the past 
and the present—the future belongs to God alone.” 

— The Holmes Case. David Paul Brown defended William Holmes 
for the murder of Francis Askin at sea. Tried in 181^2 in Circuit 
Court of U. S. Verdict, guilty. Defendant was sentenced to six 
month’s imprisonment and fine, the latter was remitted. 


WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN (1860- ), Nebraska 

“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: I can never fully 
discharge the debt of gratitude which I owe to my countrymen for the 
honors which they have so generously bestowed upon me; but, sirs, 
whether it be my lot to occupy the high office for which the convention 
has named me, or to spend the remainder of my days in private life, 
it shall be my constant ambition and my controlling purpose to aid in 
realizing the high ideals of those whose wisdom and courage and sacrifice 
brought this republic into existence. 

“I can conceive of a national destiny surpassing the glories of the 
present and the past—a destiny which meets the responsibilities of to¬ 
day and measure up to the possibilities of the future. Behold a republic 
resting securely upon the foundation stones quarried by revolutionary 
patriots from the mountain of eternal truth—a republic applying in 
practice and proclaiming to the world the self-evident proposition that 
all men are created equal; that they are endowed with inalienable rights; 
that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights; 
that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. 

“Behold a republic in which civil and religious liberty stimulate all 
to earnest endeavor and in which the law restrains every hand uplifted 
for a neighbor’s injury—a republic in which every citizen is a sovereign, 
but in which no one cares to wear a crown. Behold a republic standing 
erect, while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their 
own armaments—a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are 
only feared. Behold a republic increasing in population, in wealth, in 
strength and in influence, solving the problems of civilization and hasten¬ 
ing the coming of a universal brotherhood—a republic which shakes 
thrones and dissolves aristocracies by its silent example, and gives light 
and inspiration to those who sit in darkness. 

“Behold a republic gradually, but surely, becoming the supreme moral 
factor in the world’s progress and the accepted arbiter of the world’s 
disputes—a republic whose history, like the path of the just, ‘is as the 
shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day’.” 

— William J. Bryan, Peroration in acceptance of the Democratic 
nomination for the Presidency, 1900. 

Born in Salem, Ill., graduated from Illinois College with highest honors; 
studied law in Chicago and was admitted to the bar; removed to Lincoln, 
Neb., three years later, elected to Congress, and re-elected the following 
term; founded The Commoner, a weekly journal. He has been the candi¬ 
date of the Democratic party in three presidential elections, but was each 
time defeated. Secretary of State, under Woodrow Wilson, but resigned. 
— Author. 

“THE CROSS OF GOLD” 

“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; 
you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” 

— The closing of his platform speech for a free silver plank. He was 
not yet 36 years old. This won him the nomination. 


JAMES BRYCE (1838-1922), England 

SUPERIORITY OF TALKING OVER READING 


“Talking has this advantage over reading, that in it the mind is less 
passive. It is thinking that matters, not reading, and by Thinking 
I mean the power of getting at Facts and arguing consecutively from 
them. In conversation there is a clash of wits and to that some mental 
exertion must go. The Athenian voters, chatting as they walked away 
in groups from the Assembly, talked over the speeches. They had 
been made to feel that there were two sides to every question, and they 
argued these with one another. Socrates, or some eager youth who had 
listened to Protagoras or Georgias, overtook them on the way, and 
started fresh points for discussion. This was political education. But 
in these days of ours reading has become a substitute for thinking. The 
man who reads only the newspaper of his own party, and reads its polit¬ 
ical intelligence in a medley of other stuff, narratives of crimes and de¬ 
scriptions of football matches, need not know that there is more than one 
side to a question, and seldom asks if there is one, nor what is the evidence 
for what the paper tells him. The printed page, because it seems to 
represent some unknown power, is believed more readily than what 
he hears in talk. He takes from it statements, perhaps groundless, 
perhaps invented, which he will not take from one of his fellows in the 
workshop or counting-house. Moreover the Tree of Knowledge is the 
Tree of Knowledge of Evil as well as of Good. On the printed page 
Truth has no better chance than Falsehood, except with those who 
read widely and have the capacity of discernment. A party organ 
suppressing some facts, misrepresenting others, is the worst of all guides, 
because it can by incessantly reiterating untruth produce a greater 
impression than any man or body or men, save only ecclesiastics clothed 
with a spiritual authority, could produce before printing was invented. 
A modern voter so guided by his party newspapers is no better off than 
his grandfather who eighty years ago voted at the bidding of his landlord 
or his employer or (in Ireland) of his priest. The grandfather at least 
knew whom he was following, while the grandson, who reads only what 
is printed on one side of a controversy, may be the victim of selfish 
interests who owns the organs which his simplicity assumes to express 
public opinion or to have the public good at heart. So a democracy that 
has been taught only to read and not also to reflect and judge will not be 
the better for the ability to read. That impulse to hasty and ill-considered 
action which was the besetting danger of ruling assemblies swayed by 
orators, will reappear in the impression simultaneously produced through 
the press on masses of men all over a large country. 

“****Take English history during the 19th century, and mark in how 
many cases the working men gave their sympathy to causes which 
‘society’ frowned upon, and which subsequent events proved to have 
deserved that sympathy. What outworn prejudices, what foolish proph¬ 
ecies, what wild counsels may be heard from the lips of the rich! What 
ridiculous calumnies against political opponents have been greedily 
swallowed in the fashionable circles of Paris and London! What narrow 
views have been expressed even by brilliant writers and accomplished 
teachers or divines! High attainments in some branch of science or 
learning are compatible with crass ignorance and obstinate perversity 
where practical issues are involved. Heraclitus said long ago, ‘Much 
knowledge does not teach wisdom.’ Have not associations of working¬ 
men been more often right in their political judgment of measures than 


100 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


college common rooms and military clubs? The instincts of the multi¬ 
tude are as likely to be right as the theories of the learned.” 

—James Bryce's ^ Modern Democracies', {Feb., 1921) pp. 72-^, Vol. I. 
THE BIBLE 

“Every one can find in the Christian Scriptures what he seeks, because 
those books are not, like the Koran, the product of any one mind or 
time but of eight centuries, and record not only events and the words of 
men, but also the emergence and growth of ideas and beliefs slowly 
developed in the long life of a people which has contributed more than 
any other to the religious thought of mankind. The habit of trying 
to apply to current politics isolated dicta meant for other conditions 
has now passed away. No party resorts to an arsenal which provides 
weapons equally available for all.”— Idem 88. 

CURRAN, PLUNKET, GRATTAN, BURKE 

“There have been no orators more illustrious, few indeed so illustrious, 
in the long line of English oratory and statesmanship, as four Irishmen 
who fiourished at the end of the l8th century, Curran, Plunket, Grattan, 
and, above all, Edmund Burke, perhaps the only person in modern times 
who was not only a great statesman and orator but also one of the greatest 
prose writers of his day. Any country that produced four men like 
Curran, Plunket, Grattan, and Burke, and produced them all in the same 
generation, has rendered a service to England and to the glory of the 
English tongue which Englishmen and Americans ought never to 
forget.”— Jas. Bryce, — ‘Scoto-Irish Race in Ulster and America', 1909. 

LORD CAIRNS 

“Lord Cairns was one of the most finished masters of legal science in 
England, the 19th century saw, a most powerful parliamentary speaker, 
a great advocate, and still greater as a judge.”— Jas. Bryce. 

BUCKLE’S ‘HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN ENGLAND’ 

“Some fifty years ago the late H. T. Buckle published a book entitled 
‘A History of Civilization.’ Its vigorous style and bold generalizations 
gave it popularity at the time. But though Buckle had read widely and 
done a good deal of thinking, his knowledge was altogether insufficient 
to qualify him for the task he was attempting, and he had not been 
trained to apply adequate criticism to the authorities he used. There 
were in the book some true things forcibly stated and fitted to stimulate 
reflection, but it made no really important contribution to knowledge; 
and some of his generalizations, as for instance the well-known parallel 
between Scotland and Spain, were ludicrous.” 

— Jas. Bryce,—‘The Writings and Teachings of History.' An 

Address, at Syracuse, N. Y., Union College, June, 1911. 

THE STUDY OF HISTORY 

“We can conjecture the future only from what we know of the past, 
that is to say, from what we know of human nature and the processes by 
which it and human institutions change. One who knows only his own 
country and people does not really know them, because it is only by 
knowing something of other countries and their peoples that he can 
tell which characteristics of his own people are normal, generally present 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


101 


in all peoples, and which are peculiar to his own. So, likewise, he who 
knows only his own time does not really know it, for he cannot dis¬ 
tinguish between characteristics that are transient and those that are 
permanent. This is the main use of history, besides of course the pleasure 
which all knowledge gives. To know what we are, we must know how 
we came to be what we are, and must realize that we shall before long 
pass into something different.” 

— Jas. Bryce,—*The Study of Ancient Literature,' at University 
of Michigan, Apr., 1911. 

JAMES FROUDE 

“Froude was a brilliant stylist, who had begun his career as a writer 
of stories, and chose thereafter to display in the field of history his gifts 
of picturesque narration. His ecclesiastical partisanship was usually 
evident enough to enable a reader to discount it. A graver fault was that 
superb indifference to truth which sometimes led him to regard the facts 
he had to deal with chiefly as so much material to be handled with a 
view to artistic effect, putting on them such coloring as was needed to 
secure the particular effect desired, and caring little for accuracy in 
details which did not move his curiosity.” 

— Jas. Bryce,—^ The Writings and Teachings of History,' Syracuse, 
N. Y., Union College, June, 1911. 

T. B. MACAULAY 

“Macaulay’s amazing force and brilliance have drawn, and continue 
to draw thousands of people to his pages who would have been attracted 
by no one with a less fascinating style. But though his eminence and 
pronounced pohtical views exposed him, in his life-time, to a captiously 
minute and rather niggling criticism, his work has, take it all in all, 
stood the test of time as an authority.”— James Bryce, — Idem. 

JOHN RICHARD GREEN 

“Green, though sometimes heedless in small things, was in essential 
matters a sound and trustworthy writer, against whom few serious errors 
have ever been proved, yet his short history of England is confessedly 
as fascinating as any novel.”— Jas. Bryce, — Idem. 

LORD ACTON 

“Lord Acton, one of the most accurate as well as the most learned of 
recent English historians, though sometimes obscure from the very 
pregnancy of his thought, lit up his narrative with epigrammatic wis¬ 
dom, and, more rarely, with descriptions of concentrated glow.” 

— Jas. Bryce, — Idem. 

BANCROFT AND MOTLEY 

“Bancroft and Motley marred the effect of their books by needless 
rhetoric.”— Jas. Bryce, — Idem. 

PARKMAN 

“Francis Parkman’s laborious researches did not wither the freshness 
of his mind.”— Jas. Bryce, — Idem. 

I 


102 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


RESOURCES WITHIN ONE’S SELF 

“He who under disappointments or sorrows has no resources within 
his own command beyond the daily round of business duties,—nothing 
to which he can turn to cheer or refresh his mind, wants a precious 
spring of strength and consolation.” 

— Jas. Bryce,—at Chicago University, June 11, 1907. 

SIR CHARLES RUSSELL 

“Sir Charles Russell was, when at the bar, one of the most powerful 
advocates of our time, a strong, if not a very learned judge. He was an 
Irish Roman Catholic.”— Jas. Bryce. To Society of Penna., Feb., 1909. 

GOETHE ON SHAKESPEARE 

“Goethe’s criticisms on Shakespeare’s plays are the best that have 
ever been made.”— Jas. Bryce.—At University of Michigan, April, 1911. 

FICTION, HISTORY, POETRY 

“Prose fiction, in its highest forms, cultivates the imagination almost 
as well as history does, but poetry does this better than either. The 
pleasures of the imagination are among the highest we can enjoy.” 
— Jas. Bryce.—^Some Hints on Reading.' Rutgers College, N. J., 
Oct., 1911. 

WASHINGTON, FRANKLIN, HAMILTON 

“In that group (those that framed the constitution) were three men,— 
Washington, FranMin and Hamilton, whose fame belongs to the history of 
the world.” 

— Byrce,—^Hints on Reading,' at Rutgers College, N. J., Oct., 1911 
JAMES WILSON 

“Among the others, eminent men, even if they did not attain unto 
those first three,—Washington, Franklin and Hamilton,—one of the 
most eminent came also as a delegate from the State of Pennsylvania; 
a Scotsman from Fife who had few equals and possibly no superior in 
that Convention, as respects either the acuteness of his mind, or his 
penetration and sagacity; a man to whom some of the best features of 
the Constitution were due, and who, by his speeches in your Pennsyl¬ 
vania convention, held to consider the draft prepared by the Convention, 
added an illuminating commentary upon many provisions of the Con¬ 
stitution, and no doubt contributed materially to its adoption, both in , 
your State and in the other States of the Union.” 

— Bryce,—* The Constitution of the U. S.' To Society of N. Y. City, 
Dec. H, 1921. 

MACAULAY—A SWIFT READER 

“Macaulay read so swiftly that he seemed to turn the pages almost 
without pausing, taking in at a glance all that was in them, and yet 
carrying away all that was worth remembering.”—‘On Reading.' 

LORD ACTON—PAINSTAKING 

“Lord Acton, the most learned man I ever knew, was in the habit of 
copying on slips of paper passages or sentences which he thought valuable 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


103 


from all the volumes he perused. He had hundreds of cardboard boxes 
filled with these slips, the boxes being labeled with the titles of their 
subjects; and he seemed to know how to lay his hand upon any extract 
he wanted.”— Bryce.—‘Hints on Reading.’ 

OUR SUPERSTITIONS 

“That there is nothing of which men are so tenacious as their super¬ 
stitions, may, perhaps, be ascribed to the fact that life is ruled more 
by emotion and habit than by reason.”— Bryce’ s South America, p. 168. 

INTERMIXTURE OF RACES—Not Degenerating to the Whites 

“What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will have on the 
European element in Brazil, I will not venture to predict. If one may 
judge from a few remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the 
intellectual standard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I 
have known had some color; and other cases have been mentioned 
to me. Assumptions and preconceptions must be eschewed, however 
plausable they may seem.”— Bryce’s ‘South America.’ p. 1^80. 

AFRICA—THE PYRENEES 

“Alexander Dumas says,—‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees’; but I say, 
—South America begins at the Rio Grande del Norte, for Mexico is 
South American.”— Bryce’s ‘South America’, 521. 

SHAKESPEARE 

“There is a sense in which Shakespeare is a greater glory to England 
than the Empire of India. Homer, Virgil, Plato and Tacitus are a gift 
made by the ancient world to all the ages; more precious, because more 
enduring than any achievements of war, government or commerce.” 

— Bryce’s ‘South America,’ 521. 

SOUTH AMERICAN CITIES 

“Buenos Aires (1,300,000), Rio De Janeiro, (1,000,000), San Paulo, 
Brazil (400,000), and Santiago (325,000) are the four largest cities. 
(This was in 1810) Buenos Aires (‘pure air’), is something between 
Paris and New York, It has the business rush and the luxury of the one, 
the gaiety and pleasure-loving aspect of the other.***Nowhere in the 
world does one get a stronger impression of exuberant wealth and ex¬ 
travagance. There are very few North Americans there. San Paulo is sixty 
miles inland from Santos, and in the center of the coffee industry. There 
was exported in 1910, through the port of Santos, more than one-half 
that went out of aU Brazil.—$93,107,000 worth.” 

— Bryce’s ‘South America’, 312, 218 and 150. 

SPANISH—A WORLD SPEECH 

“Spanish is called by the Germans a ‘world speech.’ It is now used 
by 60,000,000 people in the New World, as well as by 20,000,000 people 
in Old Spain.”— Bryce’s ‘South America,’ 576. 

SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES 

“Columbia has 435,000 square miles,—twice as large as France, and 
ten peoplo to the square mile; Peru has an area of 700,000 square miles, 


104 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


—three times the size of France,—3^ people to the square mile; Bolivia 
605,000 square miles; LaPaz, 50,000 population, is the highest city in 
Bolivia, and in the world,—12,470 feet above sea-level (2,000 ft. above 
Quito, and 5,000 ft. above Mexico City; Lahasa, Tibet, comes next to it 
—11,830 ft. high); one-third of the world’s tin comes from Bolivia. 

“Chili is 3,000 miles long. The entire population of South America is 
about 45,000,000,—nearly one-half that of the United States, probably 
one-fifth pure Indian, nearly one-third half-breeds, and about one-fifth 
negroes,—nearly all in Brazil. 

“Nowhere in the world is there such variety of trees,—more than 40 
kinds are found in Brazil.” 

— Bryce* s * South America* — selected. 

BRYCE’S RANGE OF KNOWLEDGE 

“James Bryce’s range of knowledge and of intellectual interest is so 
great that he has written the most important book upon the Holy Roman 
Empire and the most important book upon the American Common¬ 
wealth.” 

—John Morley, ^Literature and Politics,* at a banquet of the 

Royal Academy, London, May 3, 1890. 

James Bryce was born in 1838 in Belfast, Ireland, educated at Glas¬ 
gow, Oxford and Heidelburg; admitted to bar, 1867; has received honor¬ 
ary degrees from about 20 leading Universities. Died in January, 1922. 

KANSAS CITY, MO. 

“I have never seen a city park in this country that equals Swope Park, 
of Kansas City, and it certainly is unrivaled among the cities of the 
Old World, so far as my travels have extended. Its strongest appeal 
to me is its magnificent reaches of wild grass and cool forest. You 
have developed a site of natural charm into a beautiful city. If I con¬ 
clude to write a book on American Cities, I will get my inspiration from 
this beautiful city of yours.” 

— Viscount Jas. Bryce,—before Knife and Fork Club, Kansas 

City, Mo. 

IMPORTANCE OP IRISH AND SCOTCH 

“I do not suppose that there ever were two people who, considering 
how small were their numbers, have made a greater noise in the world 
than the Irish and Scotch.”— Bryce,—To Society of Penna., Feb., 1909. 

JOHN MARSHALL 

“It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the American Constitution, as 
it now stands, with the mass of fringing decisions that explain it, is a 
far more complete and finished instrument than it was when it came 
fire-new from the hands of the convention. It is not merely their work, 
but the work of the Judges, and most of all of one riian, the great Chief 
Justice Marshall.”— Said by Jas. Bryce. 


TRISTAM BURGES (1770-1853), Rhode Island 

REBUKE TO JOHN RANDOLPH 


“All this shall come to pass, to the intent that New England may again 
become a lair for wild beasts and a hunting-ground for savages. The 
graves of our parents will be polluted, and the place made holy by the 
first footsteps of our Pilgrim forefathers become profaned by the mid¬ 
night orgies of barbarous incantation. The evening wolf shall again 
howl on our hills, and the echo of his yell mingle once more with the sound 
of our waterfalls. The sanctuaries of God shall be made desolate. Where 
now a whole people congregate in thanksgiving for the benefactions 
of time, and in humble supplication for the mercies of eternity, there 
those very houses shall then be left without a tenant. The owl, at noon¬ 
day, may roost on the high altar of devotion, and the ‘fox look out of 
the window’ on the utter solitude of a New England Sabbath. 

“New England shall indeed, under this proscribing policy, be what 
Switzerland was under that of France. New England, which, like Swit¬ 
zerland, the cradle of infant liberty ‘was rocked by whirlwinds in their 
rage;’ ‘New England shall, as Switzerland was, in truth be ‘the immolated 
victim where nothing but the skin remains unconsumed by the sac¬ 
rifice;’ New England, as Switzerland had, shall have ‘nothing left but 
her rocks, her ruins, and her demagogues.’ 

“The mind, sir, capable of conceiving a project of mischief so gigantic 
must have been early schooled and deeply imbued with all the great 
principles of moral evil. 

“What, then sir, shall we say of a spirit regarding this event, as a 
‘consummation devoutly to be wished?’—a spirit without one attribute 
or one hope of the pure in heart; a spirit which begins and ends every¬ 
thing, not with prayer, but with imprecation; a spirit which blots from 
the great canon of petition. ‘Give us this day our daily bread;’ that, 
foregoing bodily nutriment, he may attain to a higher relish for that 
unmingled food, prepared and served up to a soul ‘hungering and thirst¬ 
ing after wickedness;’ a spirit which, at every rising sun, exclaims, *Hoide\ 
hoidel Carthago delendaV ‘Today, today! let New England be destroyed!’ 

“Sir, divine Providence takes care of his own universe. Moral monsters 
cannot propagate. Impotent of everything but malevolence of purpose, 
they can no otherwise multiply miseries then by blaspheming all that 
is pure and prosperous, and happy. Could demon propagate demon, 
the universe might become a pandemonium; but I rejoice that the ‘Father 
of God and man’ is enough for one universe. Too much! Oh! how much 
too much for one nation.” 

In Congress, in rebuke to John Randolph who had interrupted Burges, 
while speaking, on the tariff, with, “This hatred of aliens, sir, is the un¬ 
decayed spirit which called forth the proposition to enact the Alien & 
Sedition Law: I advise the gentleman from R. I. to move a re-enactment 
of those laws, to prevent the impudent foreigner from rivaling the Ameri¬ 
can seller. New England, what is she? Sir, do you remember that 
appropriate exclamation,— ‘Delenda est Carthago' V The above was in 
answer to this challenge.— Author. 

In 1811, Burges was elected to the R. I. Legislature; in ’15 to the State 
Supreme Court; from ’15 to ’25 held the chair of oratory and belles- 
letters in Brown University, from which he graduated in 1796. Con¬ 
tinued in Congress till 1835. His logic and sarcasm won him an unrivaled 
reputation as a debater. He resumed his law practice in 1836,—4w^^or. 


AARON BURR (1756-1836), New York 


BREVITY 

“Be terse. The art of selection is the greatest human faculty.” (His 
arguments were made in half hours, never longer).— Aaron Burr. 

HAMILTON ON BURR 

“Burr was great in little things, and little in great things.”— A. Hamilton 
CHANCELLOR KENT ON BURR 

“Colonel Burr was acute, terse, polished, sententious, and sometiines 
sarcastic in his forensic discussions. He seemed to disdain illustration 
and expansion, and confined himself with stringency to the point in 
debate.” 

—Judge Kent, speaking of the Bar in the eighties, or between 1780 
and 1790. 

IDEA OF A DEVIL 

“My idea of a devil is composed more of malice than of meanness.” 

LAW 

“Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.” 
COMPROMISE 

“Now move slowly, never negotiate in a hurry.” 

“PUT OFF TILL TO-MORROW” 

“Never do to-day what you can do well to-morrow; because some¬ 
thing may occur to make you regret your premature action.” 

MADE SHORT SPEECHES 

“He seldom spoke more than a half hour. Asked no favors, and granted 
none. Hamilton’s way was to exhaust a case; giving ample statement to 
every point; saying everything that could be said in the fullest manner. 
He would speak two hours, or three hours, enchanting the attention of 
the jury and the Court, by his fiuent and sometimes lofty eloquence.. 
Burr, in replying, would select two or three vulnerable yet vital points 
of Hamilton’s speech, and quietly demolish them, and leave all the other 
parts of his oration untouched. In a twenty minutes’ speech he has been 
known to completely neutralize the effect of one of Hamilton’s elaborate 
and ornate addresses.”— Barton's Life of Burr, 152. 

STANDING AT THE BAR OF N. Y. 

“On his arrival in N. Y., Colonel Burr seems at once to have taken his 
place among the leaders of the bar, and he retained that position, for 
nearly a quarter of a century, though during that period the bar of New 
York trebled its members. With the single exception of Hamilton, 
no lawyer in the State held so high a position as he, and none in the 
country held a higher.”— Barton's Life of Burr, 152. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


107 


BURR AND HAMILTON’S METHODS AT BAR 

“As a lawyer and as a scholar Burr was not inferior to Hamilton. 
His reasoning powers were at least equal. Their modes of argument 
were very different. Hamilton was very diffuse and wordy. His words 
were so well chosen, and his sentences so finely formed into a swelling 
current that the hearer would be captivated; the listener would admire, 
if he was not convinced. Burr’s arguments were generally methodized 
and compact. I used to say of them, when they were rivals at the bar, 
that Burr would say as much in half an hour as Hamilton in two hours, 
while Hamilton was flowing and rapturous. They were much the greatest 
men in the United States.” 

— Hamilton's History of Political Parties in the State of New York: 

1 Parton's Life of Burr, 153. 

OPINION OP THE CONSTITUTION 

In Burr’s old age, he said to a gentleman; 

“When the Constitution was first framed, I predicted that it would 
last fifty years. I was mistaken. It will evidently last longer than that. 
But, I was mistaken only in point of time. The crash will come, but not 
quite so quick as I thought.”— 1 Parton’s Life of Burr, 171-2. 

TWO YEARS ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF NEW YORK 

In 1789, Governor George Clinton appointed Burr attorney-general 
of New York. He held the position two years, “and its duties,” says 
Parton, “were performed by him with punctilious correctness and effici¬ 
ency.”— 1 Barton’s Life of Burr, I7|. 

U. S. SENATOR, 1791 

In 1791 he was elected United States Senator over General Schuyler, 
who was the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton. “From this time,” 
says Parton, “dates Hamilton’s repugnance to Burr, and soon after his 
letters begin to teem with that repugnance.” In whatever direction 
Burr sought advancement, or advancement sought him, his secret, 
inveterate opponent was Alexander Hamilton, until at length the politics 
of the United States resolved itself into a contest between these two indi¬ 
viduals. — Author. 

DECLINED A SUPREME COURT JUDGESHIP ON 
N. Y. SUPREME BENCH 

He declined in 1792 a place upon the N. Y. Supreme Court, at the 
hands of Governor George Clinton.— 1 Barton’s Life of Burr, 190. 

HOW TO READ 

“To render any reading really amusing, or in any degree instructive, 
you should never pass a word you do not understand, or the name of a 
person or place of which you have not some knowledge. You will say 
that attention to such matters is too great an interruption. If so, do 
but note them down on paper and devote an hour particularly to them 
when you have finished a chapter or come to a proper pause. After 
an experiment of this mode, you will never abandon it.” 

—From letter to his wife, Phila., Dec., 1791. 1 Barton’s Life of 

Burr, 403. 


108 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


MEMORY 

“I would not wish you to possess that kind of memory which retains 
with accuracy and certainty all names and dates. I never knew it to 
accompany much invention or fancy. It is almost the exclusive blessing 
of dullness. The mind which perceives clearly, adopts and appropriates 
an '‘idea, is thus enlarged and invigorated. It is of little moment 
whether the book, the time, or the occasion be recollected.”— From letter 
to his wife, Phila., Dec., 1791.; 1 PartorCs Life of Burr, k02. 

AUTHORS 

“Of all animals, authors are the vainest; no eulogies of their works 
can be too gross or too often repeated.”— 2 Parton’s Life of Burr, 163. 

HAD REVERENCE FOR JEREMY BENTHAM 

Burr had great admiration for Jeremy Bentham and his writings, 
and they formed a lasting friendship for one another on the former’s exile 
in England, in 1808,—the latter then living in London, above sixty 
years of age. Upon Bm-r’s visit to Oxford, he praised his services as 
legislator (with which the professors agreed), but his morals and be¬ 
nevolence, with which they did not. After leaving the place Burr in his 
Journal noted: 

“Though he speaks of Bentham with reverence, and, probably, prays 
for him, I presume that he thinks he will be eternally damned and I have 
no doubt he expects to be lolling in Abraham’s bosom with great com¬ 
placency, hearing Bentham sing out for a drop of water. Such is the 
mild genius of our holy religion.”— 2 Barton's Life of Burr, 178. 

PREFERRED TWO COINS TO ONE 

“I have left in cash two half-pence, which is much better than one 
penny, because they jingle, and thus one may refresh one’s self with the 
music.” 

—2 Barton's Life of Burr, 228. {This was said when in desperate 
straits in Europe). 

RAISED MONEY BY SELLING CURIOS 

“But how did I raise it? The reply contains a dreadful disclosure. 
I raised it by the sale of my little 'meauhles,' and loose property. Among 
others, alas! my dear little Gamp’s (grandson); it is shocking to relate, 
but what could I do? The captain said it was impossible to get out of 
town (Amsterdam) without five hundred guilders (about $200.) He had 
tried every resomce, and was in despair. The money must be raised, or 
the voyage given up! So after turning it over, and looking at it, and 
opening it, and putting it to my ear like a baby, and kissing it, and beg¬ 
ging you a thousand pardons out loud, your dear, little, beautiful watch 
was sold. I do assure you,—but you know how sorry I was. If my 
clothes had been salable, they would have gone first, that’s sure. But 
heigh-ho! When I get rich I will buy you a better one.” 

—From letter to his daughter, Theodosia, upon leaving Amsterdam, 
1811.—2 Barton's Life of Burr, 224^-5. 


CHARLES KENDAL BUSCHE (1767-1843), Ireland 

AS AN ADVOCATE 

“As an advocate at nisi prius, few men won more verdicts. He had tact 
for which Scarlett was eminent, at the English bar, but he also had 
genius, eloquence,i and wit, which Scarlett had not. John Kemble 
called him, ‘the most perfect actor off the stage’. As a forensic speaker, 
clearness of statement was his great merit.” 

— Mackenzie, in ^SheiVs Sketches, etc.' H7. 

COMPARED TO CURRAN 

“If Busche had avoided the defects into which the ambition and 
enthusiasm of Curran were accustomed to hurry him, he was not ap¬ 
proached in richness of diction, or in that elevation of thought to which 
that great speaker had the power of raising his hearers with himself. 
He was often ‘led astray’, but it was ‘by the lights from Heaven.’ On 
the other hand, the more level and subdued cast of thinking and of 
phrase, which have been adopted by Mr. Busche, are better suited to 
cases of daily occurrence; and I own that I should prefer him for my 
advocate, in any transaction which required the art of exposition, and 
the elucidating quality which is so important in the conduct of ordinary 
affairs.”— 1 ShieVs Sketches, 

THE FORGIVENESS OF A CUCKOLD HUSBAND 

“It requires obdurate and habitual vice and practiced depravity to 
overbear the natural workings of the human heart: this unfortunate 
woman had not the strength farther to resist. She had been seduced, she 
had been depraved, her soul was burdened with a guilty secret; but she 
was young in crime and true nature. She could no longer bear the load 
of her own conscience,—she was overpowered by the generosity of an 
injured husband, more keen than any reproaches,—she was incapaci¬ 
tated from any further dissimulation; she flung herself at his feet. ‘I 
am unworthy,’ she exclaimed, ‘of such tenderness and such goodness,— 
it is too late—the villain has ruined me and dishonored you: I am guilty.’ 

“Gentlemen, I told you I should conflne myself to facts; I have scarcely 
made an observation. I will not affront my client’s case, nor your feelings, 
nor my own, by common-placing upon the topic of the plaintiff’s sufferings. 
You are Christians, men; your hearts must describe for me; I cannot,— 
I affect not humility in saying that I cannot,—no advocate can; as I 
told you, your hearts must be the advocate. Conceive this unhappy 
nobleman (Lord Cloncurry) in the bloom of life, with high honors and 
distinctions, enjoying great property, the proud proprietor a few hours 
before of what he thought an innocent and amiable woman, the happy 
father of children whom he loved, and loved the more as the children 
of a wife whom he adored,—precipitated in one hour into an abyss of 
misery which no language can represent, loathing his rank, despising 
his wealth, cursing the youth and health that promised nothing but the 
protraction of a wretched existence, looking round upon every worldly 
object with disgust and despair, and finding in this complicated woe no 
principle of consolation, except the consciousness of not having deserved 
it. Smote to the earth this unhappy man forgot not his character;— 
he raised the guilty and lost penitent from his feet; he left her punish¬ 
ment to her conscience and to Heaven; her pardon he reserved to Mmself. 
The tenderness and generosity of his nature prompted him to instant 


no 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


mercy,—he forgave her,—he prayed to God to forgive her; he told her 
that she should be restored to the protection of her father; that until then 
her secret should be preserved and her feelings respected, and that her 
fall from honor should be as easy as it might; but there was a forgiveness 
for which she supplicated, and which he sternly refused; he refused that 
forgiveness which implies meanness of the person who despised it, and 
which renders the clemency valueless because it makes the man despicable; 
he refused to take back to his arms the tainted and faithless woman who 
had betrayed him; he refused to expose himself to the scorn of the world 
and his own contempt;—he submitted to misery; he could not brook 
dishonor.”— 1 ShieVs Sketches, 14-7-9. 

HIS ELOQUENCE IN TRIMBLESTON CASE 

‘‘Busche held, alternately, the passions, the understanding, and the 
senses, captive,—willing captives, to the music of his diction, the might 
of his reasonable, the enchantment of his exquisite, delivery.” 

— Proctor's ^Lawyer and Client,' 37. 


LAW AND PUBLIC OPINION 

‘‘With us law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living 
pubhc opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes are waste 
paper, lacking all executive force.”— Wendell Phillips 


WOMAN 

“In all ages woman has been the source of all that is pure, unselfish, 
and heroic in the spirit and life of man. It was for love that Antony 
lost a world. It was for love that Jacob worked seven long years, and 
for seven more; and I have often wondered what must have been his 
emotions when on the morning of the eighth year, he awoke and found 
the homely, scrawny, bony Leah instead of the lovely and beautiful 
presence of his beloved Rachel (Laughter). A distinguished French 
philosopher answered the narrative of every event with the question, 
‘Who was she?’ Helen conquered Troy, plunged all the nations of an¬ 
tiquity into war and gave that earliest, as it is still, the grandest epic 
which has come down through all time. Poetry and fiction are based 
upon woman’s love, and the movements of history are mainly due to 
the sentiments or ambitions she has inspired. Semiramis, Zenobia, 
Queen Elizabeth, claim a cold and distant admiration; they do not 
touch the heart. But when Florence Nightingale, or Grace Darling, or 
Ida Lewis, unselfish, and unheralded, peril all to succor and to save, 
the profoundest and holiest emotions of our nature render them tribute 
and homage (Applause). Mr. President, there is no aspiration which 
any man here to-night entertains, no achievement he seeks to accomplish, 
no great and honorable ambition he desires to gratify, which is not 
directly related to either or both a mother or a wife (Applause). From 
the hearth-stone, around which linger the recollection of our mother, 
from the fireside where our wife awaits us, come all the purity, all the 
hope, and all the courage with which we fight the battle of life (Applause). 
The man who is not thus inspired, who labors not so much to secure 
the applause of the world as the solid and more precious approval of his 
home, accomplishes little of good to others or of honor for himself. I 
close with the hope that each of us may always have near us 

“A perfect woman nobly planned, to warm, comfort, and command. 
And yet a spirit still, and bright with something of an angel light.’” 

—After Dinner Speech hy Chauncey M. Depew, N. Y. City, 70th Anni¬ 
versary of New England Society, Dec. 22, 1875. 




BENJ. F. BUTLER (1818-1893), Massachusetts 


HOW TO GET RICH 

“When a young man has very little money let him buy some property, 
preferably a piece, however small, according to his means, of improved 
real estate that is paying rent. He had better buy it when sold at auction, 
under a judicial sale, paying in cash what he can, giving his notes for the 
balance in small sums coming due at frequently recurring intervals, 
secured by a mortgage on the property, and then use all his extra in¬ 
come in paying up these notes. It is always safe to discount your own 
note, and if the notes come a little too fast, as soon as he gets anything 
paid, his friends will aid him when he is putting his money where it 
cannot be lost, and where the property is taking care of the interest, 
and in a very short time he will find that he has got a very considerable 
investment. He will become interested in it, save his money to meet 
his notes, and he will directly come into a considerable possession of 
property, and hardly know how it came, to him. That is, he will have had 
a motive for saving, and will get the result of that saving, and will not 
be tempted to enter into speculations. Nothing is so safe for an invest¬ 
ment as improved real estate. Nothing is likely to grow in value faster. 
In the last 50 years 90 per cent of all the merchants and traders in 
Boston have failed. In the last 50 years 90 per cent of all the business 
corporations have failed or gone out of business so that their stock has 
been wiped out. In the last 50 years all the improved real estate on the 
average has paid its interest and taxes and quadrupled in value. If a 
young man’s father can give him anything to start him in the world 
he had better invest it in that way and let it accumulate and earn his 
living, and he will be richer than if he had gone into business. Jay 
Gould is said to have started from a mouse-trap seller to become a million¬ 
aire. Assuming that to be true, he is only one of 60,000,000 of people; 
and if a young man thinks that he is going to imitate Jay Gould, there 
are 60,000,000 chances to one that he won’t succeed.”— In Boston Herald 

Aug. 26, 1887. 

COUNTRY POPULATION. 

“The wealth, the prosperity, the steadfastness, the hope of religion, 
of liberty and of freedom to the world, rests on the producing and on the 
country population of this Commonwealth and on that of the United 
States.”— From a Middleton Address. 

GENIUS IN THE LAW 

“I-do not believe in genius carrying a man along in the practice of the 
law, and I want here to record, for the benefit of the young men who 
come after me in the profession, that diligence, hard study and careful 
thoughts are the only roads to success in any branch of the law, except 
that, possibly, a tiu-n for oratory may help the advocate. But the mere 
advocate, however brilliant, will lose the most cases, although he may 
win the most verdicts.”— Benj. F. Butler's Book, p. 990. 

Before trying a railroad accident case, he spent a week in a repair 
shop, coat off, hammer in hand, testing the resisting power of iron; to 
prosecute a sea captain, defended by Rufus Choate. He spent much 
time in studying books on scurvy, and recovered a verdict for $3,000 
for negligence on the part of the defendant, in not taking sufficient vege¬ 
tables, etc., for the voyage.— Author. 


112 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


HIS BIBLE KNOWLEDGE 

“I regret to say that my knowledge of the Scriptures is largely con¬ 
fined to the fact that under the tutelage of my Christian mother I read 
the Scriptures through very carefully, and was examined upon my 
reading by her. I also committed the four gospels to memory; having 
fortunately a retentive one, and was able to recite them when called upon, 
even to the first 18 verses in our version of the Gospel of St. Matthew, 
which is very trying as everybody seemed to beget everybody else.” 

— Benj. F. Butler, Oct. 1, 1892, in letter to Father Moore, of Holy 
Cross, Kans. 

Says Lyman Trumbull: “Butler was a man of versatile talents, 
great resources and executive ability. He was egotistical, had a high 
opinion of himself, and was not always scrupulous in the means employed 
to accomplish his ends; but he possessed many good qualities, and it is 
to be regretted that his ambition to succeed in whatever he undertook 
should ever have led him to resort to questionable actions. He possessed 
great ability and rendered his country valuable services, both in military 
and civil capacity.”— Said upon Butler's death. 

“My cause is before an inferior judge, of an inferior court, of an in¬ 
ferior State!” said Butler to a United States District Judge, of Rhode 
Island, who ruled out nearly all of the attorney’s evidence. 

Benj. F. Butler: “Opposition only strengthened him, tho ‘often 
in the wrong direction.’*** A trial with him was a battle in which every 
energy was put forth, every nerve strained. Politeness, even humanity, 
were entirely beside the question.”— F. W. Griffith, of the N. Y. Bar. 

Benj. R. Curtis: “After Judge Curtis had presented the case of 
his client (Andrew Johnson), nothing more was said in his behalf, altho’ 
in the five or six closing speeches of his other counsel much else was said.” 
— Benj. F. Butler. 

JOHN S. HOLMES’ RETORT TO BUTLER 

John S. Holmes, a distinguished Boston lawyer, once told General 
Butler, that he (Holmes) was often taken for him (Butler). “Well, 
what of it?” said Butler. “Why,” said Holmes, “I am afraid you will 
lose your reputation as a lawyer, and I mine as a man.” 

BUTLER’S RETORT TO SAM’L J. RANDALL 

“General Butler was the leader of the House in 1875, and Sam’lfJ. 
Randall, leader of the Democratic side. As the 43rd Congress was about 
to close, I was with Randall when Butler came up, and Randall .asked 
him to hold a Sunday session. Butler said no, that was not necessary. 
Randall turned and chaffingly said: ‘Oh, that is your New England 
Puritanism, I suppose. That serves you a good purpose and I expect 
to meet you some day, Butler, in another and better world.’ 

“Butler replied in a flash: ‘Oh, no Sam; you will be there, as you are 
here, a member of the Lower House.’ ”— Melville E. Stone. 



WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER (1825-1902), New York City 

NOTHING TO WEAR 

“Miss Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square, 

Has made three separate journeys to Paris; 

And her father assures me, each time she was there. 

That she and her friend, Mrs. Harris, 

Spent six consecutive weeks, without stopping. 

In one continuous round of shopping; 

Shopping alone, and shopping together. 

At all hours of the day, and in all sorts of weather. 

For all manner of things that a woman can put 
On the crown of her head, or the sole of her foot. 

Or wrap round her shoulders, or fit round her waist. 

Or that can be sewed on, or pinned on, or laced. 

Or tied on with a string, or stitched on with a bow, 

In front or behind, above or below; 

For bonnets, mantillas, capes, collars, and shawls; 

Dresses for breakfasts, and dinners, and balls, 

From ten-thousand-franc robes to twenty-sous frills; 

In all quarters of Paris, and to every store, 

While McFlimsey in vain stormed, scolded, and swore. 

They toted the streets, and he footed the bills! 

And yet, though scarce three months have passed since the day 
This merchandise went, on twelve carts, up Broadway, 

This same Miss McFlimsey, of Madsion Square, 

The last time we met was in utter despair. 

Because she had nothing whatever to wear! 

“I should mention just here, that out of Miss Flora’s 
Two hundred and fifty or sixty adorers, 

I had just been selected as he who should throw all 
The rest in the shade, by the gracious bestowal 
On myself, after twenty or thirty rejections. 

Of those fossil remains which she called her ‘affections,’ 

And that rather decayed, but well known work of art. 

Which Miss Flora persisted in styling her ‘heart.’ 

So we were engaged. Our troth had been phgl^ted. 

Not by moonbeam, x)r starbeam, by fountain or grove. 

But in a front parlor, most brilliantly lighted. 

Beneath the gas-fixtures, we whispered our love. 

Without any romance, or raptures, or sighs. 

Without any tears in Miss Flora’s blue eyes. 

Or blushes, or transports, or such silly actions. 

It was one of the quietest business transactions. 

Well, having thus wooed Miss McFlimsey and gained her 
With the silks, crinolines and hoops that contained her, 

I had, as I thought, a contingent remainder 
At least in the property, and the best right 
To appear as its escort by day and by night; 

And it being the week of the Stuckup’s grand ball— 

Their cards had been out a fortmght or so. 

And set all the Avenue on the tiptoe— 

I considered it only my duty to call. 

And ask if Miss Flora intended to go. 

The fair Flora looked up, with a pitiful air. 

And answered quite promptly, ‘Why, Harry, mon cher, 


114 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


I should like above all things to go with you there 
But really and truly—I’ve nothing to wear.’ 

‘Nothing to wear! Go just as you are; 

Wear the dress you have on, and you’ll be by far, 

I engage, the most bright and particular star 
On the Stuckup horizon’—I stopped, for her eye. 
Notwithstanding this delicate onset of flattery. 

Opened to me at once a most terrible battery 
Of scorn and amazement. She made me reply. 

But gave a slight turn to the end of her nose, 

(That pure Grecian feature), as much as to say, 

‘How absurd that any sane man should suppose 
That a lady would go to a ball in the clothes. 

No matter how fine, that she wears every day!’ 

“So I ventured again: ‘Wear your crimson brocade’ 

(Second turn up of nose)—‘That’s too dark by a shade.’ 

‘Your blue silk’—‘That’s too heavy.’ ‘Your pink’—‘That’s too 
light.’ 

‘Wear tulle over satin’—‘I can’t endure white.’ 

‘Your rose-colored, then, the best of the batch’— 

‘I haven’t a thread of point-lace to match.’ 

‘Your brown moire antique^ —‘Yes, and look like a Quaker.’ 

‘The pearl-colored’—‘I would but that plaguy dress-maker 
Has had it a week.’ ‘Then that exquisite lilac 
In which you would melt the heart of a Shylock’ 

(Here the nose took again the same elevation) — 

‘I wouldn’t wear that for the whole of creation.’ 

‘Then wear,’ I exclaimed, in a tone which quite crushed 
Opposition, ‘that gorgeous toilette which you sported 
In Paris last spring, at the grand presentation. 

When you quite turned the head of the nation 

And by all the grand court were so very much courted.’ 

The end of the nose was portentiously tipped up. 

And both the bright eyes shot forth indignation. 

As she burst upon me with the fierce exclamation, 

‘I have worn it three times, at the least calculation. 

And that and most of my dresses are ripped up!’ 

Here I ripped out something, perhaps rather rash. 

Quite innocent though; but, to use an expression 
More striking than classic, it ‘settled my hash,’ 

And proved very soon the last act of our session. 

‘Fiddlesticks, is it, sir? I wonder the ceiling 

Doesn’t fall down and crush you, you men have no feeling; 

You selfish, unnatural, illiberal creatures. 

Who set yourselves up as patterns and preachers. 

Your silly pretense, why, what a mere guess it is! 

Pray, what do you know of a woman’s necessities? 

I have told you and shown you I’ve nothing to wear, 

And it’s perfectly plain you not only don’t care, 

But you do not believe me,’ (here the nose went still higher), 

‘I suppose, if you dared, you would call me a liar. 

Our engagement is ended, sir, yes, on the spot; 

You’re a brute and a monster, and—I don’t know what.’ 

“Well, I felt for the lady, and felt for my hat, too. 

Improvised on the crown of the latter a tattoo. 

In lieu of expressing the feelings which lay 

Quite too deep for words, as Wordsworth would say; 

Then, without going through the form of a bow, 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


115 


Found myself in the entry, I hardly know how, 

On doorstep and sidewalk, past lamp-post and square. 

At home and up stairs, in my own easy-chair; 

Poked my feet into slippers, my fire into blaze, 

And said to myself, as I lit my cigar, 

‘Supposing a man had the wealth of the Czar 
Of the Russias to boot, for the rest of his days. 

On the whole, do you think he would have much to spare. 

If he married a woman with nothing to wear?’ 

“Since that night, taking pains that it should not be bruited 
Abroad in society, I’ve instituted 
A course of inquiry, extensive and thorough, 

Of this vital subject, and find, to my horror, 

That the fair Flora’s case is by no means surprising, 

But that there exists the greatest distress 
In our female community, solely arising 
From this unsupplied destitution of dress. 

Whose unfortunate victims are filling the air 
With the pitiful wail of ‘Nothing to wear!’ 

“Oh, ladies, dear ladies, the next summer day 
Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, 

From its whirl and its bustle, its fashion and pride. 

And the temples of trade which tower on each side; 

To the alleys and lanes where misfortune and guilt 
Their children have gathered, their city have built; 

Where hunger and vice, like twin beasts of prey 
Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; 

Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt. 

Pick your delicate way thru the dampness and dirt. 

Grope thru the dark dens, climb the rickety stair 
To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old. 

Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold; 

See those skeleton limbs, those frost bitten feet. 

All bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street. 

Hear the sharp cry of childhood, the deep groans that swell 
From the poor dying creature who writhes on the floor; 

Hear the curses that sound like the echoes of hell. 

As you sicken and shudder and fly from the door; 

Then home to your wardrobes and say, if you dare— 

Spoiled children of fashion, you’ve nothing to wear! 

“And, oh, if perchance there should be a sphere. 

Where all is made right which so puzzles us here; 

Where the glare and the glitter, and tinsel of time 
Fade and die in the light of that region sublime; 

Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense. 

Unscreened by its trappings, and shows and pretense. 

Must be clothed for the life and the service above, 

With purity, faith, meekness and love; 

Oh, daughters of earth! Foolish virgins, beware! 

Lest in that upper realm, you have nothing to wear.” 

The above poem was written 1857. Mr. Butler was the son of Benj. 
F. Butler of N. Y. (1795-1858), Attorney General of the U. S. under 
President Andrew Jackson. 

Wm. Allen Butler became widely known by his poetical satire “Nothing 
to Wear,” of which we give an abridgement, a skit on feminine extrava¬ 
gance. He also wrote a biographical sketch of Martin Van Buren (1871), 
and two works of fiction, “Mrs. Limber’s Raffle” (1876), “Nothing to 
Wear,” and other poems, a collected edition, was published in 1899. 

— Author. 


JOHN C. CALHOUN (1782-1850), South Carolina 


CALHOUN’S REASON FOR STATE’S RIGHTS 

“If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so; and we shall 
know what to do when you reduce the question to submission or resist¬ 
ance. If you remain silent, you will compel us to infer by your acts 
what you intend. In that case California will become the test question. 
If you admit her under all the difficulties that oppose her admission, 
you compel us to infer that you intend to exclude us from the whole of 
the acquired Territories, with the intention of destroying irretrievably 
the equilibrium between the two sections. We should be blind not to 
perceive in that case that your real objects are power and aggrandize¬ 
ment, and infatuated, not to act accordingly. * * * j have now, 

senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully, freely, and can¬ 
didly on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have been governed by the 
motives which have governed me in all the stages of the agitation of the 
slavery question since its commencement. I have exerted myself during 
the whole period to arrest it, with the intention of saving the Union 
if it could be done; and if it could not, to save the section where it has 
pleased Providence to cast my lot, and which I sincerely believe has 
justice and the Constitution on its side. Having faithfully done my duty 
to the best of my abihty, both to the Union and my section, throughout 
this agitation, I shall have the consolation, let what will come, that I 
am free from all responsibility.” 

—John C. Calhoun, on the Clay Compromise Measures, in 1850. 
According to Senator Jas. H. Kyle: “Calhoun’s reasoning would give 
South Carolina the right to veto an act of Congress. Very well; then 
each county in South Carolina should have a veto upon the acts of the 
Legislature; each town, a veto on the behests of a county; and each 
voter upon the decisions of the town; that one voter in South Carolina 
should have the Constitutional right to nullify an act of Congress, and 
no law should be binding which has not received the assent of every 
citizen.” 

COHESIVE POWER OF PUBLIC PLUNDER 
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people 
themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, 
combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the 
vast surplus in the banks.”— John C. Calhoun, from a speech. May 27, 1836. 

A MASTERLY INACTIVITY 
“In the meantime, our policy is a masterly inactivity.” 

THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES 

“By what causes has so inconsiderable ,a beginning as that of the 
colonies of New England, under such formidable and apparently almost 
insurmountable difficulties, resulted, in so brief a period, in such mighty 
consequences? They are to be found in the high moral and intellectual 
qualities of the pilgrims, their faith, piety, and confident trust in a super¬ 
intending Providence; their stern virtues; their patriotic love of liberty 
and order; their devotion to learning; and their indomitable courage 
and perseverence. These are the causes which surmounted every 
obstacle, and which have led to such mighty results.” 

WEBSTER, CALHOUN AND CLAY 
“Webster was inductive, and convinced the reason; Calhoun, deductive, 
and dazzled the understanding; Clay, seductive, and carried the votes.’’ 

—Edward Everett. 


LORD CAMDEN (1714-1794), England 

Charles Pratt 

GREAT BRITAIN NO RIGHT TO TAX AMERICA 

“My searches have more and more convinced me that the British 
parliament has no right to tax the Americans. I shall not criticise the 
strange language in which your proposed declaration is framed; for to 
what purpose, but loss of time, to consider the particulars of a bill, the 
very existence of which is illegal, absolutely illegal, contrary to the 
fundamental laws of nature; contrary to the fundamental laws of this 
constitution, a constitution grounded on the eternal and immutable 
laws of nature, a constitution whose center is liberty, which sends liberty 
to every individual who may happen to be within any part of its ample 
circumference? Nor, my Lords, is the doctrine new; it is as old as the 
constitution; it grew up with it; indeed it is its support; taxation and 
representation are inseparably united. God hath joined them, no 
British Parliament can put them asunder; to endeavor to do so is to 
stab our very vitals. My position is this, I repeat it—I will maintain 
it to my last hour, taxation and representation are inseparable; this 
position is founded on the laws of nature; it is itself a law of nature; 
for whatever is a man’s own, is absolutely his own; no man has a right 
to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself 
or representative; whosoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; 
whosoever does it commits a robbery; he throws down and destroys 
the distinction between liberty and slavery. Taxation and representation 
are coevil with, and essential to, the constitution. I wish the maxim 
of Macheval were followed, that of examining a constitution, at certain 
periods, according to its first principles; this would correct abuses and 
supply defects.”— From a speech in House of Lords, in 1765, 5 Lord 
Chancellors, 253. 

DISCRETION 

“The desertion of a good man is often nothing better than caprice, 
while the discretion of a bad man is an odious and irresponsible tyranny.” 
—Lord Camden. 

EARLY POVERTY 

“Camden is said to have been the tenant of a garret. Yet from the 
darkness, poverty and ignominy of this residence he advanced to dis¬ 
tinction and wealth, and graced the first offices and titles of Great 
Britain.”— Wirt’s ^British Spy,’ 220. 

HIS COLLEGE EDUCATION 

“Lord Camden owed an inestimable debt to Eaton. Not only was 
his taste refined by the exquisite, if not very profound, scholarship 
which was a special feature of the place, ‘but from his Livy, and from 
a stealthy perusal of Claudina, he imbibed that abhorrence of arbitrary 
power which animated him through life.’ ”— 1 0. G. Trevelyan’^ * George 
III and Charles Fox,’ 53. 

ON MOVING THE TROOPS FROM BOSTON 

“King, Lords and Commons, are grand and sounding names, but Bang, 
Lords and Commons may become tyrants as well as others. Tyranny 
in one or more is the same; it is as lawful to resist the tyranny of many 


118 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


as of one; this has been a doctrine known and acted upon in this country 
for ages. When the famous Selden was asked, by what statute resistance 
to tyranny could be justified? His reply was: ‘It is to be justified by 
the custom of England, which is a part of the law of the land.’ I will 
afi^m, my lords, not only as a statesman, politician, and philosopher, 
but as a common lawyer, that you have no right to tax America. No 
man, agreeably to the principles of natural or civil liberty, can be divested 
of any part of his property without his consent: and whenever oppression 
begins, resistance becomes lawful and right.” 

SKETCH OF PRATT 

He was popular as a young man; took silk at 41 years of age, though 
he was admitted at 24, having taken a degree at Cambridge. His en¬ 
trance into practice was slow, though the son of the Lord Chief Justice 
of England, and bred at Eaton and Cambridge, the associate of scholars 
and gentlemen, though equally well qualified for the profession, he was 
for many years without a client. His first real success was accidental, 
as he was junior in a case with Henley (afterwards Lord Northington), 
who was suddenly taken ill and the conduct of the case was thrown 
upon Pratt. The junior opened the plaintiff’s case with great clearness 
and precision, made a most animated and eloquent reply, obtained 
the verdict, was complimented by the judge, applauded by the audience, 
and received several retainers before he left the hall. He was made 
attorney-general, in 1757, at which time he fiourished in the court of 
chancery, and was an overmatch for the heavy equity pleaders, who for 
twenty years had been sleeping over ‘Exceptions and Bills of Revival,’ 
and during four years afterwards there is hardly a reported case in which 
his name is not mentioned as counsel. In 1762, after holding the attorney- 
generalship for five years, he was made Chief Justice of the Common 
Pleas. While in this office for four years, he was very popular, and 
many busts and prints of him were sold. His fame was carried over 
Europe, and one of the sights of London, which foreigners went to see, 
was the great Lord Chief Justice Pratt. In 1765, he became Lord Chan¬ 
cellor, under Pitt, as Prime Minister, by whom he had been befriended 
for many years. Both were great friends of the American Colonies, 
and one of the greatest speeches made in their behalf was made by Lord 
Camden, in 1765. The speech so offending Lord Grenville, the author 
of the Stamp Act, that he complained of the language used, and wished 
the House of Commons to bring the printer of the speech to the bar of 
parliament, for ‘a libel upon parliament.’ But no further notice was 
taken of it. George Hardinge in his brief life of Pratt, says of him as 
an equity judge: 

“None have denied that Lord Camden filled his judicial province of 
this new department, so as to unite all the suitors of this Court, and all 
others in one opinion concerning him, that superior talents for that seat 
had never fallen to the share of any man, except Lord Hardwicke, who 
had so wonderfully enlightened the Court by his judicial experience 
and penetration. Lord Camden’s judgment, like that of his model, 
was uncommonly sound, and his mode of delivering his opinion persuasive: 
his apprehension quick, and his explanation of the subject luminous. 
But no judge, on the other hand, had less conceit of his own undisciplined 
opinion against the weight of precedents fixed and settled. He likewise 
avoided the practice of repeahng acts of parliament by judicial construc¬ 
tion, saying, that, “he could not be more or less enlightened or liberal 
than his law-giver, had enabled him to be.” Unfortunately he seldom 
wrote his judgments, so that few of them are extant as compositions.” 

— Author. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


119 


J}istice and afterwards Lord Chancellor of England 
The above is an extract from his speech in favor of the American 
Colonies in seconding Pitt’s motion, in 1765. His position ^reatlv 
offended Lord Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act.^ ^ 

Says Mackenzie in 1 Shiel’s Sketches: “He was one of the greatest 
constitutional lawyers England ever produced.”— Author. 


THOMAS J. SEMMES’ PEN-PICTURE OF JOHN AIARSHALL 

nfO'! the opinion of Marshall in the case 
of Marbury V. Madison is not altogether unfounded. The Chief Justice 
^vmg rea,ehed the conclusion that the Supreme Court had no powlr to 
issue a. writ, of mandamus to the Secretary of State, it being L excise 
of original junsdietion not warranted by the Constitution, could have 
nthef should have, abstained from entering upon the discussion of 

Mr t 3? * necessary to be decided; it is this discussion which 

^ Jefferson sarcastically called an obiter dissertation. However that 
may be, Marshall vindicated the opinion entertained of him by the Feder¬ 
alists of t^t day, when ne held that an act of Congress repugnant to the 
Con^itution is not law, and that it is the province and duty of the Judi- 
cial Department to say what the law is; that the Constitution is to be con¬ 
sidered in Courts as the paramount law, and that any other principle 
would subvert the foundation of all written constitutions, and would give 
to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence, while the Constitution 
professed to restrict their powers within narrow limits. Before this 
decision was made there had been hesitancy and halting among iudges 
as to the power of the Court to declare an act of Congress void because 
of its repupancy to the Constitution. This decision invested the Supreme 
Court with, or rcther secured to it, a power which no Court ever before 
possess^; and the possession of such power has elicited from a distinguish- 
ed rcreigner the remark that the Court is not only a most interesting but 
virtually umpe creation of the founders of the Constitution. Ever 
since the decision rendered in the case of Marbury v. Madison except 
dmmg a paroxysm of passion, the eyes of the nation have been fixed on 
the Court as the guardian of the National Constitution and the harmon- 
mus regulator of inter-state relations. The Romans regarded their 
Ih-aetor as the living voice of the civil law;’ the Supreme Court is in fact 
the living voice of the Constitution; that is to say, it voices the will of 
-the people as expressed in the Constitution. The Court is the conscience 
of the people who, to restrain themselves from hasty and unjust action 
have placed their representative under the restrictions of paramount law! 
It is the spirit and tone of the people in their best moments. It is the 
guarantee of the minority against the vehement impulses of the majority ” 
—Delivered in New York City, February J, 1890, at Centennial 
Celebration of the Supreme Court of the U. S. 



JOHN CAMPBELL (177,9-1861), England 

DEFENDING A BAD CAUSE 

“Before such men there was no pretense for being lengthy or importu¬ 
nate. Every point made by counsel was understood in a moment, the 
application of every authority was discovered at a glance, the coun^l 
saw when he might sit down, his case being safe, and when he niight 
sit down, all chance of success for his client being at an end. I have 
practiced at the bar when no case was secure, no case was desperate, 
and when, good points being overruled, for the sake of justice it was 
necessary that bad points should be taken; but during that golden age 
law and reason prevailed—the result was confidently anticipated by the 
knowing before the argument began—;and the judgment was approved 
by all who heard it pronounced, including the vanquished party. Before 
such a tribunal the advocate becomes dearer to himself by preser^ung 
his own esteem, and feels himself to be a minister of justice, instead of 
a declaimer, a trickster, or a bully.” 

—Lord Chief Justice John Campbell, in his life of Lord Tenterden. 

Lord Eldon. “Above all the judges of his time.”— Lord John Campbell. 

Lord Holt. “He was not a statesman like Clarendon, a philosopher 
like Bacon, nor an orator like Mansfield, yet he fills nearly as great a 
space in the eye of posterity.”— Lord Campbell. 

Lord John Campbell. “I would much rather have written Pickwick 
than to be Chief Justice of England, or a peer in Parliament.” 

—2 Forester* s Life of Dickens, 72. 


LORD STOWELL, THE GREATEST OF THE CANON AND CIVIL 

LAW 

“At last the case of Dalrymple v. Dalrymple (Hagg Cons. Rep. 54), 
which was for many years understood to have finally settled the law by 
judicial decision. I believe it is universally allowed that Lord Stowell 
was the greatest master of the civil and canon law that ever presided in 
our courts, and that is the most masterly judgment he ever delivered. 
I have read it over and over again, and always with fresh delight. For 
lucid arrangement, for depth of learning, for accuracy -of reasoning, and 
for fehcity of diction, it is almost unrivalled. Although it seems to flow 
from him so easily and so naturally, it is evidently the result of great 
labor and researcn. Luckily he had full leisure to mature his thoughts 
upon the subject, and satisfactorily tO explain to us the authorities 
and arguments on which his opinion was founded. Your lordships are 
aware that the case turned upon the validity of a marriage in Scotland, 
per verbade praesenti, without the intervention of a clergyman, and it 
became essential to consider what was the general law respecting the 
m anner in which marriage was contracted. Your lordships will find he 
clearly lays it down that there was the same law on the subject all over 
Europe, and that, till the Council of Trent, by this law there was no 
necessity for the intervention of a priest to constitute a valid marriage.” 
—Lord John Campbell, in Queen v. Mills, 10 Clk. and Fin. 634, in 
House of Lords, Aug., 1843, and Mar., 1844' 


MATT H. CARPENTER (1824-1881), Wisconsin 

LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 

“The loves and friendships of individuals partake of the frail character 
of human life; are brief and uncertain. The experiences of a human life 
may be shortly summed up. A little loving and a good deal of sorrowing; 
some bright hopes and many bitter disappointments; some gorgeous 
Thursdays, when the skies are bright and the heavens blue, when Pro¬ 
vidence, being oyer us in blessings, glads the heart almost to madness; 
many dismal Fridays, when the smoke of torment be-clouds the mind 
and undying sorrows gnaw upon the heart; some high ambitions and 
many Waterloo defeats, until the heart becomes like a charnel house 
filled with dead affections, embalmed in holy, but sorrowful memories; 
and then the ‘silver chord is loosed,’ the ‘golden bowl is broken,’ ‘the 
individual life, a cloud, a vapor passeth away.’ ’’ 

—Reception to the Grand Duke Alexis. Judge J. S. Black thought 
Carpenter the foremost lawyer at the American Bar. 

Judge Jno. B. Gibson. “The opinions of Chief Justice Gibson, 
thoroughly understood, would make any man a profound lawyer.’’ 
—Matt H. Carpenter. 

Militarism. “I don’t believe a man can ever become great by learn¬ 
ing to walk a crack with a stiff neck and his fingers on the seams of his 
pantaloons.’’ —Matt H. Carpenter. 

EXORDIUM IN DEFENSE OF TILDEN 

“Permit me to state in the outset why I appear here. It is not because 
Mr. Tilden was my choice for President, nor is my judgment in this 
case at all affected by friendship for him as a man, for I have not the 
honor of a personal acquaintance with him. I voted against him on the 
7th of November last, and if this tribunal could order a new election I 
should vote against him again, believing, as I do, that the accession of 
the Democratic party to power at this time would be the greatest calamity 
that could befall our country except one, and that one greater calamity 
would be to keep him out by falsehood and fraud. I appear here pro¬ 
fessionally, to assert, and if possible, establish the right of 10,000 legal 
voters of Louisiana who, without accusation or proof, indictment or trial, 
notice of hearing, have been disfranchised by four persons incorporated 
with perpetual succession under the name of ‘the returning board of 
Louisiana.’ I appear also in the interest of the next Republican candidate 
for President, whoever he may be,, to insist that this tribunal shall 
settle principles by which if we carry Wisconsin for him by 10,000 majority, 
as I hope we may, no canvassing board, by fraud, by bribery shall be 
able to throw the vote of that State against him and against the voice 
of the people.”—/n 1877, before Electoral Commission, at Washington, D. C. 

Being upbraided by his wife for taking the unpopular side, he wrote 
her: “While I live and have my health, I must walk the mountain ranges 
of the profession swept by the storm of human hate and passion. Neither 
self-respect nor my love for you will permit me to seek obscurity and 
consequent shelter of the deep valleys and smooth meadows.” 

CHARLES SUMNER’S EGOTISM 

“He (Sumner) identifies himself so completely with the universe that 
he is not at all certain whether he is a part of the universe, or the universe 


122 


CHEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


a part of him. He is a reviser of the decalogue. You will soon see the 
Sermon on the Mount revised, corrected and greatly enlarged and 
improved by Charles Sumner.”— S. S. Cox’s 'Why We Laugh.’ 

CATHOLIC CHURCH GIVES NEW TRIAL 

Once while in the cloak-room of the Senate, reading the printed record 
in a case pending in court, a number of other Senators were discussing 
religion and the differences in the churches. Finally one of them asked 
Carpenter to what Church he belonged: “None,” said he, continuing 
his reading. Soon another asked what church he would join, if he were 
going to join any. “The Catholic Church,” but continued his reading. 
Thereupon, he was asked why he preferred that church to any other: 
“Why, that church believes in Purgatory, and that, as I understand, is 
equivalent to a chance for a new trial.” 

—From John Bolivar Cassoday, on 'Carpenter,’ 7 Gt. Am. Lawyers, 
529-30. 

MOSES GOT A REVERSAL 

In the W. W. Belknap impeachment there was a certain ruling against 
Carpenter. Subsequently he sought to have it changed, urging upon 
Scriptural authority, that Moses, on re-argument, induced the Almighty 
to reconsider and reverse His former judgment.— 7 Gt. Am. Lawyers, 633. 

JUSTICE BRADLEY’S TRIBUTE 

“I esteemed him (Carpenter) one of the best advocates I ever knew. 
He was extremely happy in possessing the court, at once, with the pith 
and gist of his case, no matter how occult or complicated it might be. 
Although to always do this must have cost him an intense amount of 
labor and extra investigation, his address did not betray them except 
in the result, his manners and style having all the outward appearance 
of being perfectly off-hand and spontaneous. He was, indeed, a thor¬ 
oughbred lawyer and must have devoted himself, in the early part of his 
studies, very closely and laboriously to the great classics of the law. 
It was a real pleasure to see him in any case, and whatever else came, 
we always knew we should have at least one strong beam of light poured 
upon the pending case before it was closed.” 

MR. JUSTICE FIELD’S ESTIMATE 

“Carpenter was one of the strongest and most remarkable men who 
ever appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States.” 

EDMUND’S PUN TRIBUTE TO CARPENTER 

Senator Sumner having alluded to Carpenter as a “jester” which 
aptly described one side of Carpenter’s character. Senator Edmunds, 
by a ready pun, as aptly described the other side of him by declaring 
that the Senator from Massachusetts probably meant a “suggester.” 

HIS APPEARANCE 

“Carpenter was a man of very elegant presence, though his short 
neck and high shoulders made it impossible for him to be classed as a 
handsome man. His fine head, with abundant iron-gray hair, tossed 
carelessly back from his forehead, his keen and expressive mouth, shaded 
by a black moustache, made a very noticeable portrait, and his voice was 
so musical and penetrating that it lent a charm to the merest trifle that 
he uttered.”— 2 Perley Poore’s Reminiscences, 310-11. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


123 


HIS JOKE ON THE DEAF ATTORNEY 

Carpenter was the attorney for the plaintiff in error in a certain case. 
When the opposing attorney began to answer his speech, the court 
declared that it was unnecessary for him to speak further. The attorney 
was hard of hearing, and did not understand the remark, when Carpenter 
spoke up and said; “The Court would rather give you the case than 
hear you talk!”— J. F. Haskin, in his ^American Government,' 330. 

JUDGE J. S. BLACK’S EPITAPH 

“Among men in public life a closer friendship is scarcely found than 
that which existed between two great lawyers, the late Senator Car¬ 
penter and the late Judge Black. Admiration for the legal learning 
of one another was the basis of the relation which grew to be one of the 
strongest possible. Judge Black looked upon Senator Carpenter much 
as a father looks upon a brilliant son, with a tender charity for all his 
faults and an affectionate pride in his talents. Judge Black had a lively 
consciousness of his own greatness as a lawyer. As age came on, and he 
felt he was losing in legal strength, he said: ‘Yes, I am losing a little, 
but Matt is gaining and between us, we manage to hold a good share of 
the legal attainments of the world!’ Outside the immediate family of 
Senator Carpenter no one felt the death of the brilliant lawyer more than 
Judge Black. When the movement for a Carpenter monument was 
started, Mrs. Carpenter was requested to select some one to write the 
epitaph to be inscribed upon it. Naturally the selection fell upon his 
great favorite. Judge Black. A few weeks before his death. Judge Black 
wrote and sent to Mrs. Carpenter the epitaph which is now published 
for the first time. We are indebted to Dr. William Fox, the physician 
of Senator Carpenter, and a warm friend of Judge Black’s, for a copy of 
the memorial, and for an abstract from the letter. Judge Black said: 

“You and our own immediate family are responsible for the inscription, 
if you adopt it; and that responsibility means something, for if it be 
grossly overdone, or come tardily off, it will mar the better reputation, 
which a better epitaph would leave him. Therefore, I suggest for your 
consideration, some of the defects of it. In the start, perhaps, you will 
think it somewhat extravagant, I mean the words with which it begins. 
‘The most accomplished orator,’ etc. I cannot mend that, for I think 
it true, and I will have no hand in damning him with faint praise. He 
was first, with a great interval between him and the second. You can 
better it all through by making it shorter and sharper. But, while I 
wish it to be as your own taste and judgment may dictate, I warn you 
against too free a use of your own pruning knife, for you labor under 
some of the disabilities which unfit me for such composition. Better 
get a cooler head than either of us. Consult some of your good and wise 
friends, and see what they advise in the way of modification. 

“The religious point puzzled me some. I believe he had the faith, 
and the hope, as I am sure he had the charity of a Christian, but I do 
not know, for that is one of the subjects upon which he and I never 
talked. However the fact may be, the future felicity of a dear friend, 
whether his life has been good or evil, is such a common-place topic of 
tombstone eloquence, that I omit it without regret. There are some 
phrases you may wish to change, do it without hesitation. Some are 
doubtful, for instance, ‘swallowed up,’ for which I would have used the 
weaker figure, ‘absorbed,’ or something equivalent, only^ that Paul 
(not Paul Carpenter, but Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles) is authority 
for those words in that sense. The arrangement of the lines have no 
analogy to written or printed compositions. Now, I do not know that 
there is any rule about it. It is an artistic question, depending, perhaps, 
on the size, shape or aspect of the surface upon which they are to be 


124 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


lettered. I think any marshalling of the lines is reasonably good, and it 
ought not to be much changed for a light reason. Some words ought to 
be prominent, larger or in stronger relief than others. I have not indicated 
them.” 

The Epitaph exhibits Judge Black’s great admiration for Senator 
Carpenter, as an orator and a lawyer, and his deep affection for him as 
a man. It reads thus: 

MATTHEW HALE CARPENTER 

“The most accomplished orator of his day and generation. 

He addressed no audience that he did not charm, and 
Touched no subject that he did not adorn. 

First among Senators and foremost of statesmen. 

He was mighty in word and deed. 

True to his country and his conscience. 

His public career was as stainless as it was lofty. 

He was worthy to stand, as he did, at the head of the legal 
profession, 

Because he was professionally versed in its learning, 

A thorough master of its practical rules, and 

Irresistibly powerful in forensic debate, 

Yet his family and all his associates. 

Including the rivals he surpassed. 

Are apt to overlook his shining talents. 

As they recall the generous kindness of his heart, and 
The admiration of the great jurist, the eloquent advocate. 

The brilliant Senator, the matchless political leader. 

Is lost to them and swallowed up in personal 
Affection for the man.” 

— Copied from scrapbook of A. A. L. Smith, Milwaukee, Wis., 
Aug. J, 1896. 

Now that both of these great lawyers and warm friends have passed 
away, the tribute of one to the other will be read with interest, aside from 
the fact that it will be inscribed on a monument to Wisconsin’s brilliant 
orator.— Author. 

BURST OF ELOQUENCE IN THE McARDLE CASE 

“This is the first time in the history of the world that a bench of 
judges has been invoked to redeem the wrongs, real or imaginary, of eleven 
millions of people, and to establish the authority of ten pretending 
governments. Such controversies have been decided by force, not by 
reason; in the field, not in the courts. Waterloo determined the fate 
of Napoleon, and he went in sullen silence to his ocean rock, never dream¬ 
ing of the habeas corpus. No lawyer can argue, no judge decide, this 
cause without a painful sense of the responsibility. Its consequences, 
upon our children, and generations yet unborn will rejoice or mourn 
over the principles to be here established. This court has been told, 
not for the first time, that it is the great conservative department of the 
government; that if it does not keep constant vigil over the other depart¬ 
ments they will rush, as would the planets without the law of gravitation, 
into ‘hopeless and headlong ruin.’ There is nothing within the circle 
of human emotions, unless it be the pleasure with which a lover praises 
the real or imaginary charms of his mistress, at all to be compared to the 
delight from our studies and our training that we entertain the utmost 
reverence for those who must declare what the law is. Within proper 
bounds this is commendable, but the bar of a free country often have 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


125 


higher duties to perforin, and this adulation of judges may be carried to 
excess. The judges of this court, like the Apostles of our Lord, are men 
of like passions and infirmities with other men. 

“The bar stands in inuch the same relation to the court that the 
prophets held to the ruling powers of the ancient dispensation. It is 
our duty, when the occasions require to admonish and warn, and that, too, 
whether courts will listen or whether they will refrain. There are times 
when general truths should have personal application, times when 
a prophet in Isreal must say to the king of Israel, ‘Thou art the man.’ 
But to do this he should be a prophet and not a mere technical Levite. 
He should stand among his brethren like Saul among the multitude, 
head and shoulders above them all. So, too, the counsel to say what 
ought to be said here, should be one venerated for his age, admired for 
his wisdom, one who could command audience in this court, as it has 
been said Welhngton commanded attention in the House of Lords, not 
for elegance or art in arranging an argument, but because he had done 
the things. He had stood beneath the shell-rent tree, while the fate of 
Europe was being determined at Waterloo.” 

—Ex parte McCardle, 6 Wallace, 318, for the Government to have 
appeal to U. S. Supreme Court dismissed. 

The positions argued by Carpenter in the above case, constituted the 
very grounds upon which the reconstruction measures enacted by Congress 
were founded, and the States relegated back to their place in the Federal 
Union.— Author. 

A WAR SPEECH 

“Nearly forty years of profound public tranquility have passed over 
and blessed our land. We have forgotten to use the weapons of war 
and have cultivated the arts of peace. We have engrossed our thoughts 
and enlisted our hearts in the pursuits of agriculture, manufactures, and 
commerce, and advancing the arts and sciences useful to man. No 
nation has been blessed, none has so prospered. While we have thus been 
improving all our mutual interests, amassing wealth at home and accumu¬ 
lating honors abroad, other nations have been vexed and worried with the 
‘dogs of war;’ the war-cloud has darkened the sunny sky of Italy; armies 
have trampled the vine-clad fields of France, and the recruiting drum has 
been heard on the green hills of Merry England. * * * We hand out 

our banner, no dusty rag representing the twilight of seven stars, but the 
old banner that has fioated triumphantly in every breeze; the banner 
Decatur unfurled to the Barbary States; that Jackson held over New 
Orleans; that Scott carried to the Halls of the Montezumas; and thereby 
we mean to say, in no spirit of defiance, but with the firmness of manly 
resolution, this flag shall wave while an Amercian lives to protect it.” 
—At a War Meeting, in Milwaukee, Wis. 

MASTER OF A COURT-ROOM AND ALL IN IT 

A distinguished lawyer in the West, once said that Carpenter might 
not be the greatest lawyer that ever lived, but certainly no other man 
was ever born, who could go into court, take possession of judge, jury, 
witnesses, opposite counsel, all, and drive where he pleased as Matt 
Carpenter could. 

RUFUS CHOATE 

“Mr. Choate has been a member of this body (U. S. Senate); he stood 
at the head of the legal profession of his native State and had no superior 
at any bar, English or American. As an advocate he had no peer. In 


126 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


this department of the profession I do not believe his equal ever lived. 
A mass of uninteresting facts, the tedious details of the dryest subjects, 
touched by his magic wand stood forth to the quickened apprehension of 
court or jury with the beauty and freshness of spring, and his nervous 
oratory and magnetic eloquence moved the tenderest emotions and 
strongest passions of men, as the wind sways the forest. With inter¬ 
national and municipal law, and especially with constitutional law, he 
was entirely familiar. He was full of learning, but not incumbered by 
it, for the details of his knowledge were not attached to him like 
merchandise strapped to a dromedary, but were digested, assimilated, 
made part of himself by the fusing power of his transcendent genius.” 

—From speech in the United States Senate. 

At the age of nine. Carpenter, committed Webster’s Reply to Hayne, 
seventy pages, and declaimed it verbatim, to the delight of his rural 
audience. He never wrote out his speeches. He could repeat whole books 
of the Bible, and entire plays of Shakespeare; and could on the instant, 
deliver every line of the ‘Lady of the Lake.’ Probably no other lawyer 
ever read as many books, and when he came upon a passage notable for 
the strength of its reasoning, he memorized it, then and there, never 
forgot it, and ever had it at his instantaneous command. Rare passages 
and choice thoughts, beautifully expressed, were selected and committed 
to memory, until his mind became a storehouse full of literary treasures, 
from which he could draw at will.— Author. 


GEORGE F. EDMUNDS’ ESTIMATE 

“Carpenter possessed a breadth of intellectual grasp and acuteness and 
discrimination that I have rarely seen equalled, and his power of research 
and analysis was superb. His capacity for lucid statement and logical 
deduction was perfect; and to all these he added a wealth of learning, 
particularly in the law, a richness of voice, a fluency of speech, and an 
eloquence that made him, one of the most remarkable men of any 
time.”— Memorial proceedings in U. S. Senate. 

THE TURNING POINT IN CARPENTER’S LIFE 

“Mr. Carpenter often said that ‘circumstances make men,’ and as an 
illustration frequently related how he got his start. Some three years 
after he settled in Beloit, Wisconsin, to practice law, the public became 
very much agitated over license or no license of the saloons. There 
being a college in the town, the faculty took strong ground against 
the license. At this juncture, young Carpenter was called upon to address 
the people in favor of license at the town hall. The evening the speech 
was made, Newcomb Cleveland, of New York, the many times million¬ 
aire, came to Beloit to look after his railroad interests in that State as 
to the construction of the Milwaukee and LaCrosse Railroad. The 
Company had employed most of the leading lawyers of Milwaukee to 
represent their side. While Mr. Cleveland was strolling around town, 
he asked the hotel clerk if there was anything going on that evening which 
would be of interest to hear. He was told nothing, except a young lawyer 
was to speak at the town hall on the license question. Mr Cleveland, for 
want of something better, strolled in to hear him. About two years 
later. Carpenter sat in his office reading a magazine, when Mr. Cleveland 
stepped in and asked if he was Mr. Carpenter. Being told that he was, 
Mr. Cleveland told him he wanted him to look after his railroad interests 
in that State; that he would pay him $6,000 a year, and wanted him to 
move to Milwaukee at once; that the litigation would probably take 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


127 


ten years; and that he should retain no one else. Young Carpenter 
accepted, a contract was drawn, and Mr. Carpenter moved forthwith to 
Milwaukee with his family and entered upon his work. About eight 
years were consumed in the various legal contests for Mr. Cleveland’s 
interests in the State and Federal courts, and Mr. Carpenter added: 
‘If it had not been for that little speech on the license question, I 
probably would have continued in Beloit for some years, perhaps, during 
the remainder of my life. If I had remained there, I never would have 
been Senator. Cleveland brought me into a wider field, and then I 
studied as no man ever studied before to carry his litigation through 
successfully. The license speech was the turning point of my life, and 
made me all I am.’ ”— Flower’s Life of Carpenter, 79. 

WEBSTER AND MARSHALL 

“Of all the judges, English and American, whose opinions are valuable 
to the student. Chief Justice Marshall stands pre-eminent. I read the 
argument of Mr. Webster in Odgen v. Saunders, upon the constitutionality 
of State insolvent laws, as reported by Mr. Everett, and before I knew 
how the case was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
While reading this argument, I was carried away captive through par¬ 
agraph after paragraph, from proposition to proposition, and, when I 
had finished it, I never thought of looking to see how the case was decided, 
because I would have made my affidavit that Webster’s argument was 
wholly unanswerable, and, of course, must have been decided with him. 
And when I found, a year or two after, that the court decided the case the 
other way, I recollect that I lost confidence in human reasoning for the 
space of ten days. Nothing finally consoled my disappointment, except 
the fact that the Chief Justice dissented from the decision of the court, 
and canonized the argument of Mr. Webster. But for this, I think, I 
should have concluded that logic was an unsafe guide in the labyrinths 
of the law; however, I satisfied the wounded pride of my boyish judg¬ 
ment by resolving that Webster and Marshall were greater authority 
than the rest of mankind combined, and that Webster was right though 
he did not succeed.” 

—Extract from Lecture to Law Students, in Washington, D. C., 1870. 
ENGLISH REPORTS 

“Buy your own State reports, next the New York reports, which will 
furnish you with ingeniously reasoned cases on every side of every 
question, and then to relieve the bewilderment of the inexperienced mind, 
tossed to and fro by reading New York decisions, you need the sobering 
infiuence and steady support of the Massachusetts reports. Next, 
and before the reports of other States, I would buy all the English Com¬ 
mon Law and Chancery reports, and continue them with the present 
series, bringing the decisions of the English courts within a few weeks 
or their actual delivery.”— From Same Lecture. 

CONGRESS BOUGHT HIS BRIEFS 

“Carpenter had a collection of all the briefs, arguments, etc., presented 
to the Supreme Court of the U. S. since its organization. These were 
bound and as the only similar collection extant belonged to the Phil¬ 
adelphia Law Library, were considered so valuable that after his death 
Congress purchased them for $8000 for an addition to the Congressional 
Library.”— Life of Carpenter, 513. 


HAMPTON L. CARSON (1852- ), Pennsylvania 


AMERICAN LIBERTY 

“The institutions established by our fathers we hold in trust for all 
mankind.' It was the Pilgrim of Massachusetts, the Dutchman of New 
York, the Quaker of Pennsylvania, the Swede of Delaware, the Catholic 
of Maryland, the Cavalier of Virginia, and the Edict-of-Nantes man of 
South Carolina, who united in building up the interests and in contribut¬ 
ing to the greatness and the unexampled progress of this magnificent 
country. The blood of England, of Holland, and of France, wrung 
drop by drop by the agony of three frightful persecutions, was mingled 
by the hands of Providence in the alembic of America, to be distilled by 
the fierce fires of the Revolution into the most precious elixir of the ages. 
It is the glory of this era that we can stand here today and exclaim that 
we are not men of Massachusetts, nor men of Pennsylvania, nor men 
of Illinois, but that we are Americans in the broadest, the truest, and the 
best sense of that word; that we recognize no throne, no union of Church 
and State, no dominion of class or creed. 

“American liberty is composite in its character and rich in its material. 
Its sources, hke the fountains of our Father of Waters, among the hills, 
are to be sought among the everlasting truths of mankind. All ages 
and all countries have contributed to the result. The American Revolution 
forms but a single chapter in the volume of human fate. From the pure 
fountains of Greece, before choked with dead leaves from the fallen 
tree of civilization; from the rude strength poured by barbaric trans¬ 
fusion into the veins of dying Rome; from the Institutes of Gaius and the 
Pandects of Justinian; from the laws of Alfred and the Magna Charta 
of King John; from the daring prows of the Norsemen and the sons of 
RoUo the Rover; from the precepts of Holy Writ and the teaching of 
Him who was nailed to the cross on Calvary; from the courage of a Gen¬ 
oese and the liberality and religious fervor of a Spanish Queen; from 
the enterprise of Portugal and the devoted labors of the French Jesuits; 
from the scaffolds of Russell and Sidney, and of Egmont and Horn, 
from the blood of martyrs and the visions of prophets; from the unexam¬ 
pled struggle of eighty years of the Netherlands for liberty, as well as from 
the revolution which dethroned a James; from the tongue of Henry, 
the pen of Jefferson, the sword of Washington, and the sagacity of 
Franklin; from the discipline of Steuben, the death of Pulaski and De 
Kalb, and the generous alliance of the French; from the Constitution 
of the United States; from the bloody sweat of France and the struggle 
of Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Italy for constitutional monarchy; 
from the arguments of Webster and the judgments of Marshall; from 
the throes of Civil War and the failure of secession; from the Emanci¬ 
pation Proclamation and the enfranchisement of a dusky race; from 
the lips of the living in all lands and in all forms of speech; from the 
bright examples and deathless memories of the dead—from all these, 
as from ten thousand living streams, the lordly current upon which 
floats our Ship of State, so richly freighted with the rights of men, broad¬ 
ens as it flows through the centuries, past tombs of kings, and graves of 
priests, and mounds of buried shackles, and the charred heaps of human 
auction blocks, and the gray stones of perished institutions, out into 
the boundless ocean of the Future. Upon the shores of that illimitable 
sea stands the Temple of Eternal Truth; not buried in the earth, made 
hollow by the sepulchres of her witnesses, but rising in the majesty of 
primeval granite, the dome supported by majestic pillars embedded in 
the graves of martyrs. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


129 


“And thou, great bell! cast from the chains of liberators and the copper 
pennies of the children of our public schools, from sacred relics con¬ 
tributed by pious and patriotic hands, baptized by copious libations 
poured upon the altar of a common country by grateful hearts, and 
consecrated by the prayers of the American people, take up the note 
of prophecy and of jubilee rung out by your older sister in 1776, and in 
your journey round the globe proclaim from mountain-top and valley, 
across winding river and expansive sea, those tones which shall make 
thrones topple and despots tremble in their sleep, until all peoples and 
all nationalities, from turbaned Turks and Slavic peasants to distant 
islanders and the children of the Sun, shall join in the swelling chorus, 
and the darkest regions of the earth shall be illumed by the heaven-born 
light of Civil and Religious Liberty!” 

—Delivered at the World's Fair, Chicago, III., July IJi, 1893, on 
the Liberty Bell. 

JOSEPH STORY 

“Story swept the bounds of jurisprudence with comprehensive glance, 
and poured forth the rich accumulations of his industry with flowing 
pen.”— From Carson's ^History of the Supreme Court of the U. S.' 

RESOLUTION CONDEMNS JUDGE LANDIS STERNLY 

“The resolution, drawn late today by the executive committee of the 
association, was presented by Hampton L. Carson of Philadelphia, 
formerly president of the organization. The resolution read as follows: 

“ ‘Resolved, That the conduct of Kenesaw M. Landis in engaging in 
private emolument while holding the position of a federal judge and 
receiving a salary from the federal government meets with our un- 
qualifled condemnation as conduct unworthy of the office of judge, 
derogatory to the dignity of the bench and undermining public con- 
fldence in the independence of the judiciary.’ 

“In upholding the honor of the profession of the law,” Mr. Carson 
said in presenting the resolution, “Of what use is it to prescribe canons 
of ethics if we know that the man on whom the judicial ermine rests 
has soiled that ermine by yielding to the temptation of avarice and private 
gain? ” 

“Here is a federal judge (Landis) who receives $7,500 a year yielding 
to the solicitation of commercial interest, sapping his judicial strength 
by taking $42,000 a year from baseball players. 

“It is simply dragging the ermine in the mire. It may be that im¬ 
peachment cannot reach him, but one thing cannot escape us, that is, 
in every judicial circuit and every bar in the country rises the withering 
scorn of protest against the men who would stain their honor. 

“To ignore this thing would have been to leave this convention hang¬ 
ing our heads in shame at the execrable conduct of this judge.” 

— Nat'I Bar. Assyi. Cincinnati 0., Sept. 2, 1921. 


JAMES C. CARTER (1827-1905), New York 

JAMES C. CARTER’S TILT WITH SIR CHAS. RUSSELL 

“Those are the doctrines,” said Carter, “of the municipal law every¬ 
where agreed to. There is no dissent that I am aware of in reference to 
them; and being the universal doctrine of municipal law they may be 
taken, I apprehend, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, as being 
the doctrine of international law.” 

“You must not assume,” said Russell, “that I agree to that. You 
say it is universally admitted.” 

“I do not assume that you agreed to anything,” retorted Carter. 

Russell answered: “I should not have interposed, but my learned 
friend said it was universally admitted!” 

Carter closed by saying: “I must understand a permanent exception 
to that; but I cannot be very well deprived of the use of the word ‘gen¬ 
eral’ or ‘universal’ because it may be held not to include my learned 
friend. So far as my knowledge extends, those doctrines are universally 
acceded to.”— 8 Great American Lawyers, — Art. Carter pp. 36-7. 

Mr. Carter’s seven day argument before the International Tribunal, 
of the Bering Sea controversy, at Paris, in 1893, in which E. J. Phelps, 
Jas. C. Carter and Frederic R. Coudert, appeared for the U. S.; and Sir 
Charles Russell, Sir Richard Webster and Christopher Robinson, for 
Great Britain.— Author. 

PROPER THEORY OF TAXATION 

“I am not one of those who believe in what is called a latitudinary 
construction of the powers of Congress, and who seek to circumscribe 
within the narrowest limits the power of this tribunal to sit in judg¬ 
ment upon the validity of congressional action. Ours is a government 
of delegated and limited powers, and I hope the day will never come when 
this Court will hesitate to declare that the limit has been passed, when it is 
clearly convinced of the fact. But I also hope that it will forever decline 
the office of judgment in cases where the question does not assume a 
purely judicial form; and that it will especially refrain when there is 
mingled with the question any element of legislative discretion which can 
not be separated from it. The powers of this court are limited as well as 
those of Congress, and those limits are already transgressed when it 
finds itself even considering whether this or that view of a question of 
political economy, or the wisdom of taxation is a sound one. 

“These suggestions are all the more weighty and important in those 
controversies which, like the present, are calculated to arouse the interests, 
the feelings—almost the passions—of the people, from the subject of 
public discussion, array class against class, and become the turning 
points in our general elections. Upon such subjects every freeman 
believes that he has a right to form his own opinion, and to give effect 
to that opinion by his vote. Nothing could be more unwise and dangerous 
—nothing more foreign to the spirit of the Constitution—than an attempt 
to baffle and defeat a popular determination by a judgment in a law suit. 
When the opposing forces of sixty millions of people have become arrayed 
in hostile political ranks upon a question which all men feel is not a ques¬ 
tion of law, but of legislation, the only path of safety is to accept the 
voice of the majority as final. The American people can be trusted not 
to commit permanent injustice; nor has history yet recorded an instance 
in which governments have been destroyed by attempts of the many 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


131 


to lay undue burdens of taxation on the few. The teachings of history 
have all been in the other direction. 

“But if an overwhelming majority, in an effort to accomplish what it 
believes to be justice, finds itself suddenly arrested in its course by another 
majority of a body of half a dozen or more who happen to hold different 
opinions upon substantially the same questions, but who assume to speak 
with a different authority and to utter the voice of law, the consequence 
can hardly fail to be disastrous to the stability of the law itself. Such 
a triumphant majority is likely to find its way to the accomplishment of 
its end over the ruins, it may be, of any constitution or of any court. 
We have had some experiences in our history of the futility of attempting 
to convert political into judicial questions, and the results have not added 
to the authority of this tribunal. It is the part of wisdom for a judicial 
body to avoid attempts at the solution of problems which must and will 
be finally settled in another forum.” 

— Jas. C. Carter,—In the Income Cases, in reply to George F. 

Edmunds. 

Mr. Carter, a native of Massachusetts, settled in N. Y., in 1853, enter¬ 
ing the office of Kent & Davies. 

“He was not a specialist lawyer,’’.says George A. Miller. “He conducted 
cases involving intricate questions of real property law in which he made 
himself profoundly familiar with ancient tenures; others in may phases— 
some of them novel—of commercial law; others involving learning in 
the foundations of equity jusrisprudence; and still others of various 
branches of admiralty and maritime law. * * * He was the greatest lawyer 
of his time.” 

Jos. H. Choate who read law with Mr. Carter, said recently to a Law 
Class, at Harvard, “Young men, you are now about to go forth; some 
will go West, following Greeley’s advice; others will settle in the great 
commercial centers- Some of you had better come to New York,—the 
metropolis of this country. James C. Carter is getting old, and must 
soon die, and when he does there will be room for a thousand of you 
there.” 

THE NOON OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND ITS CLOSE 

“Mr. President, what has become of the spirit, the philosophy, the 
ideals, which held such firm control at the middle of the century? Dis¬ 
credited at least, if not dismissed, must be our confession. And what have 
we in their place? Can a calm and just answer to this question that 
our society both in thought and action is under the control of an enormous 
pressure of material interests which hold in disdain any appeals to the 
universal principles of truth and right ? And these results have been 
reached, or are defended, not by appeals to reason, to truth, to science, 
or to history, but by the assertion that there are irresistible tendencies 
to which we must not only yield, but which we must support and urge 
forward because they are irresistible, and those who deny their rectitude 
and struggle against them are stigmatized as impracticable theorists, 
or traitors to the interests of humanity. 

“Against this abandonment of reason and morals, this substitution of 
brute force or blind fate in the place of truth and right, I utter an humble 
protest. I am no devotee of the past, or believer, in the finality of any 
past solutions of human problems, either in morals or politics. It may 
well be that the changes in human affairs, and especially such portentous 
ones as are now challenging the attention of mankind, require a revision 
of old theories. Nations have their duties as well as individuals, which 
must be performed at whatever sacrifice of inconsistent opinions. This 
great nation of ours, undoubtedly had duties to the world as well as to 


132 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


itself, and these must be performed even if we have to cast away the 
glittering generalities of the Declaration or even Republican government 
itself. 

“But before we discard the long-accepted teachings of the past let us 
be sure that they have fulfilled their functions and require revision. 
Let them stand until new ones, reached in a reverent effort to find out 
what is true and right have been ascertained and established; and mean¬ 
while, let the pressure of material interests, the denunciations of poli¬ 
ticians, and the clamors of yellow journalism be set at defiance. 

“I appeal to you, Mr. President, and trust you, and your successors 
after you, will see to it that truth, truth in science, truth in morals, 
truth in politics, truth when exiled from the market place, the legislative 
hall, the pulpit, or the rostrum shall find a refuge and a sanctuary here; 
here, where of old an altar was consecrated to her service, where from of 
old she has had her arms and her chariot; here, where her name has for 
centuries stood emblazoned, where a priesthood of the great and good 
have for generations delivered her oracles; here let truth, liberty and 
justice be held in ever-increasing honor, and assert the everlasting suprem¬ 
acy of the moral over the material world.” 

—From address on 50th Anniversay of class of 1850, at Harvard, 
Delivered by Mr. Carter in 1900. 

OBEDIENCE TO LAW 

“Who does not know that the ultimate support upon which all laws 
must rest is public opinion? And what is this but saying that law, in 
order to be obeyed and enforced, must accord with the public standard 
of justice.”—Ja5. C. Carter. 

IMPROVEMENT OF THE LAW 

“The desire to effect an improvement in the law is, surely, in the highest 
degree praiseworthy; and to connect one’s own name with a lasting 
improvement is a noble ambition. But the danger is that the gratifi¬ 
cation of the ambition or the vanity will become a motive greatly superior 
to the wish to effect a solid improvement—a danger to which the law 
has been in almost every age exposed.” 

— Jas. C. Carter—In reference to D. D. Field's Civil Code, which 
Carter opposed. 


ORATORY 

“It is difficult to prescribe methods by which the art of commanding 
attention may be acquired. I think the first requirement is that the man 
should be in earnest, — that is, that he should really believe what he says.” 

LIBERTY 

“Liberty, the first of blessings, the aspiration of every human soul, 
is the supreme object. Every abridgment of it demands an excuse, 
and the only good excuse is the necessity of preserving it. Whatever 
tends to preserve this is right, all else is wrong. To leave each man to 
work out in freedom, his own happiness or misery, to stand or fall by the 
consequences of his own conduct, is the true method of human discipline. 
For myself, I reject that view of the cosmical scheme, which would regard 
society as the unit for the well-being of which our efforts should be 
immediately directed, even though individual happiness and perfection 
were thereby sacrificed. The society most perfect, as a whole, will be 
that alone which is composed of the most perfect and happy individuals.” 

— ^Law, its Origin, Growth and Function.' 


JOHN CATRON (1781-1865), Tennessee 

GAMBLING 

“Like other passions which agitate the great mass of the community 
it lies dormant until once aroused, and then with the contagion of pesti¬ 
lence, it sweeps morals, motives to honest pursuits and industry into the 
vortex of vice; unhinges the principles of religion and common honesty; 
the mind becomes ungovernable, and is destroyed to all useful purposes; 
chances of successful gambling alone are looked to for prosperity in life, 
even for the daily means of subsistence; trembling anxiety for success 
in lotteries, at the faro bank or loo table, exclude all other thoughts. 
Expectation is disappointed; more losses are sustained; the highly ex¬ 
cited and desperate feelings are kindled by drunkenness, from which 
arises a wretch, 'vvith a recklessness and desolation of feeling, that the 
genius of a Shakespeare or a Milton could not, nor can any man, describe. 
Swindling, forgery, theft—every crime that extreme necessity and out¬ 
cast desperation can suggest to a man, lost to all the moral ties, though 
guarded against, are likely shortly to follow in the train. We ask him 
who has known the world and ways of men as they are, not as they 
should be, are these not truths? Have you seen the poisoned arrow 
pierce_the devoted victim? Have you seen him driven to desperation, 
and his misery in self destruction? Have you yourself felt the sting of 
this deadly poison? If you have known and felt these, you can, and do, 
understand us. Who that has gambled much, and to excess, has not 
partly seen and felt in a thousand shapes the picture of misery here 
sketched, presenting instances of mental degradation and agony, melan¬ 
choly as any with which offended Heaven has ever permitted the mind 
of man to be afflicted? He who imagines this to be extravagant fancy 
has never sat at a loo table, dealing at ten dollars and forfeiting a hundred 
for perhaps a week together, or a half week, without sleep or ceasing to 
play. If he has when young, he will appreciate the feeling (should his 
head now be gray) that induces him to look back with awe upon the vices 
and misfortunes of his youth; he may be marked as the earnest advocate 
of highly penal statutes, to deter his son from similar outrages upon the 
laws of God, and the laws of this, and, we could hope, of every civilized 
land. We wish to set forth the wise policy of Tennessee; not by decla¬ 
mation, but by our knowledge of practical truths; still the melancholy 
desolation of the mind of man in ruins cannot be given as a fact; it must 
be described. To protect man against the frenzy of his own mind, we 
have legislation. We are called upon to execute the laws up to their high¬ 
est penal sanction, that of depriving a citizen of his equal rights to hold 
office with his fellow men; we find the law constitutional, imperious 
in its commands, and are determined firmly and fully to execute it. 
It is our wish as also our duty, to inform the people of Tennessee of the 
reasons of its enaction, rigorous execution, and the dangers pending over 
them in case of its violation.”— In deciding State v. Smith, 2 Yeager's 
Reports, 271. 

John Catron was born in Wythe, County, Va., in 1781, and died 1865. 
He was Judge of The Supreme Court of Tenn. from 1824 to 1836. In 
1837 he was appointed by Andrew Jackson an Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Court of U. S., which he held till 1865,—28 years.— Author. 


PORTRAIT OF ABBOTT’S WIFE 

“Nowhere in literature could they have found so true a portrait of 
my wife as in the last 21 verses of the 31st Chapter of Proverbs.” 

— Abbott's Reminiscences, 77. 



SALMON P. CHASE (1808-1873), Ohio 

AN INDESTRUCTIBLE UNION 

“The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible 
Union, composed of indestructible States.” 

—hi Texas v. White, 7 Wallace, 700. 

THE LEGAL TENDER ACT,—UNCONSTITUTIONAL 

“It is not surprising that amid the tumult of the late Civil War, and 
under the influence of apprehension for the safety of the Republic 
almost universal, different views, never before entertained by American 
statesmen or jurists, were adopted by many. The time was not favorable 
to considerate reflection upon the constitutional limits of legislative or 
executive authority. If power was assumed from patriotic motives, 
the assumption found ready jurisdiction in patriotic hearts. Many who 
doubted yielded their doubts; many who did not doubt were silent. 
Some who were strongly averse to making government notes a legal tender 
felt themselves compelled to acquiesce in the views of the advocates of 
the measure. Not a few who then insisted upon its necessity, or ac¬ 
quiesced in that view, have, since the return of peace, and under the 
influence of the calmer time, reconsidered their conclusions, and now 
concur in those which we have just announced. These conclusions seem 
to us to be fully sanctioned by the letter and spirit of the Constitution.” 

In Hepburn v, Griswold, 8 Wallace, 603, in which it was held,—flve 
against three, to the effect that the Legal Tender Act, passed by Congress 
during his secretaryship and at his instance was unconstitutional. 
A change in the membership of the Court caused the constitution¬ 
ality of the Legal Tender Act to be upheld in the Legal Tender Cases, 
by flve against four. Chase dissented .—12 Wallace, 457. 

Lincoln said of Chase: “Chase is about one and a half times bigger than 
any other man I ever knew. There is not one man in the Union who 
would make as good a Chief Justice as Chase. If I have the opportunity, 
I will make him Chief Justice of the United States.” Lincoln accord¬ 
ingly did, in 1864, and he held that office till he died May 1, 1873. 

NOTED FOR HIS GALLANTRY 

The late Chief Justice Chase was noted for his gallantry. While 
on a visit in the South, after the war, he was introduced to a very beautiful 
woman who prided herself upon her devotion to the “lost cause.” Anxious 
that the Chief Justice should know her sentiments, she remarked, as 
she gave him her hand,—“Mr. Chase, you see before you a rebel who has 
not been reconstructed!” 

“Madam,” he replied, with a profound bow, “reconstruction in your 
case, would be blasphemous.” 

HUGH McCulloch on chase 

“His mind was clear and logical, comprehensive in its grasp, and 
certain in its conclusions. He was a fine scholar, a master of the English 
tongue; spoke with ease and distinctiveness; not what might be called 
a fluent, nor, according to the American idea (which is rapidly changing) 
an eloquent speaker; but he had few equals in analyzing difficult questions 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


135 


and making abstruse subjects intelligible. Inclined to be dogmatic, 
he was nevertheless genial, in social intercourse, and at times fascinating. 
In manners he was courtly without assumption; in opinion, tenacious 
without intolerance. He was strong in his convictions, and steadfast in 
his principles .”—^Men and Measures of Half a Centuryf 181. 

READING 

“The knowledge obtained by bare reading is of very little value. 
Books must be meditated and talked, to be understood and converted 
into mental aliment.”— Said by Chase: 5 Great Am. Lawyers, 3^2. 

WHY A^^POINTED CHIEF JUSTICE 

“Lincoln was persuaded to appoint Chase Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the U. S., by Justice Field and Miller, and Senator Sumner.” 

—Don Piatt—^ Men Who Saved the Union,’ 120-3. 

GATH ON CHASE 

“Chase failing to be President in 1860 and 1864, played the Teller 
in the Democratic convention, in 1868 and was cut out by Horatio 
Seymour. The remainder of his life was in obscure and mystical mutiny 
against his own fame.”— Said by Gath, 1898. 

GIDEON WELLES CRITICISM OF 

“Chase is cowardly and aspiring, shirking and presumptuous, forward 
and evasive;—* * * an ambitious politician; possessed of mental resources 
yet afraid to use them, irresolute, as well as ambitious; intriguing, selfish, 
cold, grasping and unreliable, when he fancies his personal advancement 
is concerned.” 

In reference to Chase not advising and taking a position in the trial 
of Jefferson Davis.— See 2 Welles’ Diary, 366. 

LORD CHARWOOD ON CHASE 

“Though egotistic. Chase was clever, evidently a pleasant man to 
work with—a useful minister under a wise chief, though he later proved 
a harmful one under a foolish chief.”— 'Life of Lincoln,’ 325. 

CHASE AND LINCOLN ON GREENBACKS 

“Amasa Walker, the New England financier, originated the idea of the 
notes issued by the government to the people as currency should bear 
interest. This, for the purpose of preventing inflation by inducing people 
to hoard the notes, as an investment, when the demands of trade failed to 
call them into circulation as a currency, but for the purpose of making 
them popular. This idea struck David Taylor, of Ohio and he urged 
Lincoln to put the project into immediate execution. The President 
listened patiently, said it was a good idea, but advised Taylor to go to 
Chase, as he was running that end of the machine, and had time to 
consider the proposition. Chase was seen, who treated the matter coldly, 
—said it was unconstitutional. This was reported to Lincoln, who told 
Taylor to go back to Chase, and tell him ‘not to bother himself about the 
constitution, as he was guarding that with great care’. Taylor said there 
would be no use, as Chase showed by his manner that he knew all about 
it, and did not wish to be bored by any suggestions. ‘We’ll see about that,’ 
and taking a card, Lincoln wrote: ‘The Secretary of the Treasury will 


136 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


please consider Mr. Taylor’s proposition. We must have money, and I 
think this a good way to get it.’ 

“Taylor returned to Chase, was treated more patiently than before, but 
was cut short, and proposed that they both see the President. This was 
done,—Chase made a long and elaborate constitutional speech against the 
measure. , ‘Chase,’ said the President, ‘down in Illinois I was held to 
be a pretty good lawyer, and I believe I could answer every point you 
have made, but I don’t feel called upon to do it. This thing reminds me 
of a story in the newspaper the other day. It was of an Italian captain 
who run his vessel on a rock and knocked a hole in the bottom. He set 
his men to pumping, and he prayed to the figure of a Virgin in the bow 
of the ship. The leak gained on them. The captain, finally in a fit of 
rage, seized the Virgin and threw it overboard. Suddenly the leak stopped, 
the water was pumped out, and the vessel got safely into port. When 
docked for repairs, the statue of the Virgin Mary was found stuck head 
foremost in the hole.’ 

“ ‘I don’t see, Mr. President, the precise application of your story,’ 
said Mr. Chase. 

“ ‘Why, Chase, I don’t intend precisely to throw the Virgin Mary over¬ 
board, and by that I mean the Constitution, but I will stick it in the 
hole, if I can. These rebels are violating the Constitution, to destroy the 
Union, I will violate the Constitution, if necessary, to save the Union, 
and I suspect. Chase, that our Constitution is going to have a rough 
time of it before we get done with this row. Now, what I want to know 
is, whether. Constitution aside, this project of issuing interest-bearing 
notes, is a good one?’ 

“ ‘I must say,’ responded Chase,’ that with the exception you make, it 
is not only a good one, but the only way for us to raise money. If you say 
so, I will do my best to put into immediate operation the plan, and 
you will never hear from me any opposition on this subject.’ 

“ The people eagerly accepted the loan which the capitalists were 
prompt to depreciate and dishonor.” 

—Don Piatt —‘Men Who Saved the Union,’ 107-9. 


COMPENSATION FOR SLAVES 

At the Peace Conference, Feb. 1861, Chase proposed compensation 
to the owners of fugative slaves. 

AN INCIDENT IN HIS BOYHOOD 

After graduating at Darmouth, he went to Washington, D. C., and 
attempted to teach school, but was unsuccessful. He waited patiently 
for scholars day after day, but they never materialized, and as money was 
giving out, he applied to his uncle, Dudley Chase, then U. S. Senator from 
Vermont, for a position under the Government, The Senator, who 
knew well that a life is blasted when once thrown into the ruts of Depart¬ 
ment work, refused to assist him, but encouraged him with these words: 

“I’ll give you a half-dollar to purchase a spade, for then you might 
come to something, but once settle a young man down in a Government 
office, he never does anything more,—it’s the last you hear of him, 
I’ve ruined one or two young men in that way, and I’m not going to ruin 
you.” Thus rebuffed, he soon got a school, and then went into the 
office of William Wirt, studied law, and in 1830, at the age of 22, was 
examined, and admitted to practice law, moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, 
where he afterwards became Governor of the State, 1847, and two years 
later United States Senator, and 1861, to the Treasury of the U. S., as 
Secretary, in Lincoln’s Cabinet, and in 1864 to the Chief Justiceship 
of the U. S. Supreme Court. 


JOSEPH H, CHOATE (1832-1917), New York City 


CROSS-EXAMINATION OF A JEW 

Mr. Choate was once trying to show that a Jew who had failed in 
business, did so to defraud his creditors, and this colloquy took place:— 

Q. “Mr. Isaacs, did you not fail also in 1875, and pay but 60 cents 
on the dollar?” 

A. “Well, yes, but that was a very hard year, and many others failed, 
too.” 

Q. “I did not ask you about the others. But did you not fail in 1867, 
and pay but 40 cents on the dollar ?” 

A. “Yes, but that was right after the War, when everyone went 
under.” 

Q. “Did you not fail in 1858, and pay your creditors nothing?” 

A. (Greatly excited and incensed). “Well, that is my business, sir!” 

Q. “Yes, I see it is. That’s all.” 

LAUTERBACH AND CHOATE’S FEES 

Choate and Edward F. Lauterbach were associated in the trial of 
a desperate damage case, in which they recovered a judgment for $40,000. 
The case was Lauterbach’s who had called in Mr. Choate as associate 
counsel. Returning to their offices, they debated what they had better 
charge their client. Lauterbach thought $2,000 would be about right, 
and as their client was a Jew, as was he, he had better collect it. 

“No,” said Choate, “you leave that to me. I have gotten pretty 
well acquainted with our client, in the trial of the suit, let me attend to 
that.” 

In a few days Choate met Lauterbach and handed him his own check for 
$4,000, as his half of the fee collected. Upon receiving the same, Lauter¬ 
bach remarked:— 

“Choate, ‘almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian’.” 

^ MRS. CHOATE’S SECOND HUSBAND 

One evening at a banquet, at which Mr. and Mrs. Choate, were guests, 
it was agreed that the toast-master should call each man to his feet and 
then announce his subject. When Mr. Choate was called upon, this 
question was put to him:— 

“Mr. Choate, if you could not be Joseph H. Choate, who would you 
prefer to be?” Looking across the table, his eyes quickly fell upon Mrs. 
Choate, and he instantly replied:—“If I could not be myself, I believe 
I should prefer to be Mrs. Choate’s second husband!” 

GREATNESS 

“I am one of those who believe that the stuff that a man is made of has 
more to do with his career than any education or environment. The 
greatness that is achieved or is thrust upon some men dwindles before 
that of him who is born great.”— From an Address on Rufus Choate. 

This was true of J. H. Choate, as he was the son of a doctor in Salem, 
Mass., struggled to go through Harvard, read law for several years in 
Wm. M. Evart’s office, N. Y., to whom he took a letter from his Uncle, 
Rufus Choate, of Boston—boarded and roomed in an attic, at $5.00 and 
$6.00 per week for four or five years, in his early career as a lawyer. 

— Author. 


138 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


LINCOLN 

“Fiction can furnish no match for the romance of Lincoln’s life, and 
biography will be searched in vain for such startling vicissitudes of fortune, 
so great power and glory won out of such small beginnings and adverse 
circumstances. 

“I lay great stress on his career as a lawyer, much more than his 
biographers do, because in America a state of things exists wholly different 
from that which prevails in Great Britain. The profession of the law 
always has been, and is to this day, the principal avenue to public life; 
and I am sure that his training and experience in the courts had much 
to do with the development of those forces of intellect and character 
which he soon displayed on a broader arena. When he died by the mad¬ 
man’s hand in the supreme hour of victory, the vanquished lost their 
best friend, and the human race one of the noblest examples, and all the 
friends of freedom and justice, in whose cause he lived and died joined 
hands as mourners at his grave.’’ 

—From an address before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, 

Nov. 13, 1900. 

RUFUS CHOATE 

“In the case of Rufus Choate it was considered quite indispensible 
that he should reside in Cambridge on account of the influence which 
his genial manners, his habitual presence, and the force of his character 
would exert over the young men drawn from every part of the United 
States to listen to his instructions. * * * You may search the 

biographies of all the great lawyers of the world, and you will And none 
that surpassed, I think none that approached him, in the rare quality, 
and power of self discipline. * * ♦ jjjs power of labor was inex- 

haustable, and down to the last hour of his professional life he never 
relaxed the most accute and searching study, not of the case in hand only, 
but of the whole body of the law and of everything of history, poetry, 
philosophy, and literature that could lend anything of strength and luster 
to the performance of his professional duties. His hand, his heart, 
his imagination, were never out of training. Think of the man already 
walking the giddy heights of assured success, already a senator of the 
United States from Massachusetts, or even afterwards, when the end 
of his professional labors was already in sight, schooling himself to daily 
tasks in law, in rhetoric, in oratory, seeking always for the actual truth 
and for the best language in which to embody it, the ‘precisely one right 
word’ by which to utter it, think of such a man, with all his ardent 
taste for the beautiful in every domain of human life, going through 
the grinding work of taking each successive volume of the Massachusetts 
Reports as they came out, down to the last year of his practice, and mak¬ 
ing a brief in every ease in which he had not been himself engaged, with 
new researches to see how he might have presented it, and thus to keep 
up with the procession of the law. 

“I regard the magniflcent argument which he made on the judicial 
tenure in the Constitutional Convention of 1853, as the greatest single 
service which he ever rendered to the profession, and to the Common¬ 
wealth, of which he was so proud. You will observe, if you read it. 
that it differs radically in kind, rather than in degree from all his other 
speeches, arguments, and addresses.’’ 

—From an Address on Rufus Choate. 

Jos. H. Choate’s idea was that Chief Justice Shaw, one of the trustees 
of Harvard Law-School, wanted Rufus Choate to follow Justice Story, 
as lecturer at Harvard, and live in Cambridge, one of the greatest 
tributes to Choate of anything of which he knew.— Author. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


139 


RUFUS CHOATE’S LETTER TO EVARTS 
“My dear Mr. Evarts: 

I beg to incur one other obligation to you by introducing the bearer, 
a kinsman, to your kindness. He is just admitted to our Bar, was 
graduated at Cambridge with high honors, all work. (Jos. H. Choate 
is referred to). He comes to the practice of law with extraordinary 
promise. He has decided to enroll himself among the brave and mag¬ 
nanimous of your Bar, with a courage not unwarranted by his talent, 
character, ambition and power of labor. There is no young man whom 
I love better, or from whom I hope more, or as much, and if you can do 
anything to smooth the way to his first step, that kindness will be most 
seasonable, and will yield all sorts of good fruits. Most truly your 
servant and friend, 

“RUFUS CHOATE.’’ 

“Boston, Sept. 24, 1855.” 

HAMILTON 

“Foremost among those (Washington’s advisers) in intellectual 
brilliancy, individual force, constructive capacity, and personal infiuence 
was Alexander Hamilton. * * * stands today, as I think, 

next to Washington and Franklin among the celebrated Founders of 
the American Republic.” 

—Inaugural Address, Mch. 19, 190^, before Associated Societies 
of the University of Michigan. 

THE FEDERALIST 

“It is a book wh ch is thought by many competent authorities to be 
the ^eatest book that America has given to the world, and which 
certainly ranks very high among works on constitutional law and prin¬ 
ciples the world over. For clear and cogent reasoning, plainness and 
simplicity of thought, earnestness of purpose, and purity of diction and 
literary style, I know of no American book that surpasses it, and no 
student of constitutional or public law can be without it.”— Idem. 

HAMILTON, AS FOUNDER OF CONSTITUTION, AND GREAT¬ 
EST MINISTER OF FINANCE 

“It was in this business of convincing and converting a reluctant 
people to acceptance and support of the new plan of government, that Ham¬ 
ilton performed those prodigious services, and displayed that surpassing 
genius which establishes his fame as the greatest constitutional lawyer 
and statesman of that eventful era, and commanded the everlasting 
gratitude of his country and mankind. 

“And further, Hamilton still stands by far our greatest Finance Min¬ 
ister, with whom we may safely challenge any comparison. 

“The New York delegation in the Constitutional Convention of the 
United States, to adopt that instrument, stood forty-six out of sixty- 
five against the Constitution, with Clinton, the Governor, at its head 
and in the chair. Hamilton led the minority of nineteen, and after weeks 
of debate won over the majority almost single-handed and carried the 
Convention by a vote of thirty to twenty-seven. And, at the time, 
was but thirty years of age.”— Idem. 

EMERSON 

“I confess that of all the authors with whom I am familiar, I turn 
always first to him (Emerson) for light and leading and find him more 


140 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


suggestive, more instructive, more awakening than any other; theie 
are but few subjects dealing with the conduct of life, or the duties of 
man, of the study of nature, of which he has not treated more or less 
directly; and anyone who has to take up such a subject for the first time, 
cannot begin better than by turning to his pages to see what he has 
said about it.” 


— ^Ral'ph Waldo Emerson,' Lecture at the Passmore Institute, June 
15, 1903. 

SCOTT 


“I have often thought that I would rather have been the author of 
one such book as Waver,ley, or Kenilworth, or Henry Esmond, or Romola, 
than to achieve any other kind of personal, professional or public fame. 
The good that these books do us, the rest they give us, the enjoyment 
they yield us among the hundreds of millions who read the language 
in which they are written, is absolutely infinite, and the fame that the 
author of such a book wins rivals, if it does not outshine, all other kinds 
of fame.” 

■—From Address before the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club, Nov. 

11, 1899. 

BURNS, SCOTT, CARLYLE 


\ 


“Search through history, ancient and modern, where will you find 
three such wonderful boasts of literature as Burns, Scott and Carlyle? 
The emerald, the ruby and the diamond, the three great jewels in Scot¬ 
land’s crown.”— Idem. 


THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION 


“They differed in opinion and sentiment on many points but all 
agreed in a supreme dread of arbitrary power whether it should be exer¬ 
cised by the Executive, the Legislature, or the Judiciary Department, 
whether by a single man, or by a majority of all, for they considered that 
the majority without any restrictions upon its power might become 
quite as dangerous as any other despot. They did not believe with my 
Lord Coke that absolute despotic power must in all government reside 
somewhere. They carried this distrust of arbitrary power so far they 
actually tied the hands of the people whom they regarded as the source 
of all political power, and deprived them of the right to consider any 
amendment of the Constitution, until it should be proposed by a vote of 
two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, on the application of the legis¬ 
latures of two-thirds of the States, and deprived them of the power of 
voting directly upon any amendment, which could be ratified by the 
legislatures or conventions of three-fourths of the States. In other 
words, the People of the United States, who ordained the Constitution, 
deprived themselves of the power to modify it by the direct vote of a 
majority of two-thirds, or even three-fourths of their own number, 
whether that number should be three millions or eighty millions. They 
must act deliberately and indirectly through Congress, Legislatures, 
and Conventions. Truly a rare instance of political self-restraint at the 
basis of free populaT government.” 

—'The Supreme Court of the U. S.,’ Address before the Political 
and Social Education League, May 13, 1903. 

OUR DUAL SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 


“The Supreme Court can set aside, declare null and void any act of 
any Legislature or of Congress itself which comes in conflict with the 
provisions of the Constitution. I believe it has been exercised by that 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


141 


Court about twenty-four times in the case of Acts of Congress, and 
something like two hundred times in the case of State enactments, and 
it has been the balance wheel upon which our complicated and dual 
system of government has turned. There we have every foot of our 
territory and over every living being within it two distinct and indepen¬ 
dent governments, each supreme and absolute in its own sphere and work¬ 
ing in absolute harmony because of this harmonizing function of our 
great tribunal.” 

—'Bench and Bar of England' at Lincoln's Inn, April IJf., 1905, 
THE PRACTICE OF LAW 

“I started in life with a belief that our profession in its highest walks 
afforded the most noble employment in which any man could engage, 
and I am of the same opinion still. Until I became an Ambassador 
and entered the terra incognita of diplomacy I believed a man could be 
of greater service to his country and his race in the foremost ranks of the 
Bar than anywhere else; and I think so still. To be a priest, and possibly 
a high priest, in the temple of justice, to serve at the altar and aid in her 
administration, to maintain and defend those inalienable rights of life, 
liberty and property upon which the safety of society depends, to succor 
the oppressed and to defend the innocent, to maintain Constitutional 
rights against all violations, whether by the Executive, by the Legisla¬ 
ture, by the resistless power of the Press, or, worst of all, by the ruthless 
rapacity of an unbridled majority, to rescue the scapegoat and restore 
him to his proper place in the world, all this seemed to me to furnish a 
field worthy of any man’s ambition.”— From 'Bench and Bar of England,' 
at Lincoln's Inn, Apr. H, 1905. 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

“I have always believed that Mr. Webster, more than any other man, 
was entitled to the credit of that grand and universal outburst of devotion, 
with which the whole North sprang to arms in defense of the Constitu¬ 
tion and the Union, many years after his death, when the first shot 
at Fort Sumpter, like a fire bell in the night, roused them from their 
slumber, and convinced them that the great citadel of their liberties was 
in actual danger. Differ as we may and must as to his final course in 
his declining years, the one great fact can never be blotted out, that the 
great work of his grand and noble life was the defense of the Constitution, 
so that he came to be known of all men as its one Defender,—that for thirty 
years he preached to the listening nation the crusade of nationality, 
and fired New England and the whole North with its spirit. He inspired 
them to believe that to uphold and preserve the Union, against every 
foe, was the first duty of the citizen; that'if the Union was saved, all was 
saved; that if that was lost, all was lost. He molded better even than he 
knew. It was his great brain that designed, his flaming heart that forged, 
his subhme eloquence that welded the sword, which was at last, when he 
was dust, to consummate his life’s work, and make Liberty and Union one 
and inseparable forever.” 

—At the Unveiling of Rufus Choate's Statue at the Court House, in 
Boston. Great American Lawyers, 3 vol., 556-7. 

REPLY TO CROKER 

“This cordial reception that you have given to me is almost as great 
a compliment as I received last week from the voluptuous lips of Mr. 
Croker himself, for I must say that I regard it as the highest compliment 
for any respectable citizen to be abused by him (Laughter). And there 
is a great deal that hangs on the fact that Mr. Croker, for the first time in 


142 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


this campaign, has opened his lips. The dumb has spoken (Laughter). 
He never speaks when things are going in a way that suits him, and I 
ask you why it is that this shrewd and calculating politician, at this late 
hour in the campaign, has found it necessary to open his lips? Well, 
this audience looks to me like a good old-fashioned audience, who remem¬ 
ber things they have read in the Bible. Croker’s speech, and why he 
spoke, recalls to my mind the familiar story of Baalam’s Ass (Laughter). 
And in two or three points Mr. Croker reminds us of that very celebrated 
beast of burden. In the first place, until the Ass spoke nobody in the 
world imagined what a perfect Ass he was (Roars of laughter). If he 
hadn’t spoken he would have passed into history as an average, ordinary, 
silent Ass, who carried Baalam on his way; but when he spoke he was 
distinguished over all other Asses in the land (Renewed laughter). 
But that is not the only way in which Mr. Croker recalls that story. 
Why did the Ass speak? Do you remember the story? It was because 
he was frightened, it was because, as the Bible says, he got into a tight 
place, where he could neither turn to the right nor the left, and, in that 
situation, when he saw him who bore a flaming sword conipronting him, 
at last the Ass spoke; and it was in the same tight place that Croker 
spoke when, at last he was afraid of him who bore the sword before him, 
and you can tell who the young man is that bore the sword.” 

—In Reply to Croker that he, Choate, was the attorney for trusts, 
corporations and rich men; that he had never taken a case for a poor 
man. Theron C. Strong’s Jos. H. Choate, pp. 75-6-. 

REVERENCE FOR PARENTS 

“I have never made any important decision without wondering what 
my father and mother would have said about it.” 

— Strong’s Life of Choate, p. 11. 

PHRENOLOGIST FOWLER’S ADVICE TO CHOATE 

“Well, supposing I should study law, what then?” asked Choate of 
Dr. Fowler, who had examined his head. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” replied Dr. Fowler, with decision. “You 
will make a great failure if you do.” This was during Choate’s college 
days.— Strong’s Life of Choate, p. 11. 

SELECTION OF A BIRTH-PLACE 

“It requires great forecast for a man to select a birthplace of which 
he shall always be proud; but he must, indeed, be an unreasonable 
creature who, having America for a continent, Massachusetts for a State, 
Essex for a County, and Salem for a native Town, is not entirely satisfied. 
Of course, a man born anywhere can get along somehow.” 

—From Address at Salem, Strong’s Life, 28. 

“CHOOSE YE ONE BULLOCK” 

“Choose ye one Bullock for yourselves,” referring to 1st Kings, Chap. 
18, verse 25. (Said by Choate at a banquet, at a New England Dinner, 
in New York City, at which ex-Governor Bullock, of Massachusetts, was 
present. 

LAW 

“Law is the expression and the perfection of common sense.” 

— Jos. tl. Choate. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


143 


REPLY TO EXASPERATED LAWYER 

“1 can whip six like you,” said a worsted lawyer opposed to Choate. 
The latter replied, looking at him with a profound calmness: 

“When I was a boy, my father owned a bull. He was a wonder to 
fight. He could whip all the cattle in the neighborhood, and did it. 
But at that he couldn’t win a lawsuit.” 

GREAT READER 

Choate was an omniverous reader, without a trace of intellectual 
pedantry, he was able to assimilate the most diverse and seemingly 
mental foods, making them nutritious. His favorite studies were Con¬ 
stitutional and English history. His favorite authors were George 
Eliot and Thackeray, and he had Shakespeare at his tongue’s end. But 
he read all the popular books of the day, good bad and indifferent, and 
found something in everything.— Strong's Life of Choate, p. 6^. 

GUEST OF SENATOR E. O. WOLCOTT 

On one of his visits to Washington, he was a guest of Senator Wolcott, 
of Colorado, as was also the late Thos. B. Reed, of the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives. The conversation turned upon what some would consider 
vices, and others, frailties of mankind, and Mr. Choate remarked, “I 
have never smoked a cigar, never played a game of poker, and never 
attended a horse race in my life.” Senator Wolcott looked pathetically 
at Speaker Reed and said, “I wish I could say that.” Mr. Reed’s char¬ 
acteristic and witty response was: “You can, Choate did.” 

— Strong's Life, 89. 

SOME COURT INCIDENTS 

“If you say that again, I shall commit you for contempt.” said a 
judge to Choate. 

“I have said it once, and it is unnecessary to say it again,” replied 
Choate. 

On another occasion, a judge allowed his attention to be diverted from 
an argument Mr. Choate was making. Mr. Choate stopped, and the 
judge looked up in surprise. Mr. Choate proceeded: 

“Your Honor, I have just forty minutes in which to make my final 
argument. I shall need not only every second of my time to do it justice, 
but I shall also need your undivided attention.” “And you shall have it,” 
the judge courteously replied. 

“No,” replied the judge, “this case has been kept waiting long enough, 
the trial must proceed now.” 

“But I cannot leave in the midst of a trial before the Surrogate,” 
expostulated Choate. 

“I shall order the trial to proceed at once,” exclaimed the judge snap¬ 
pishly. 

“You Honor,” replied Choate, speaking slowly with icy politeness, 
“undoubtedly has the physical power to order me to proceed with the 
trial forthwith, but your Honor has not the legal power to order me.” 
The judge flushed with displeasure, but immediately granted an adjourn¬ 
ment. 

A striking instance of his fearless and independent spirit with the 
judges was when Recorder Smyth undertook to punish John W. Goff, 
himself subsequently Recorder, and a Judge of the Supreme Court, 
for an alleged contempt of cou t while defending a prisoner. Mr. Choate 
volunteered his services in the interest of protecting the profession 


144 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


in doing whatever may be legitimately regarded as necessary in the 
discharge of duty. Mr. Choate, in presenting the ease, declared that 
Mr. Goff had not committed a contempt because his conduct on that 
particular occasion was not what Recorder Smyth declared it to be. 

“But,” interrupted the Recorder hastily, “I saw him do it.” 

“Then,” replied Mr. Choate, quite calmly, “it becomes a question, 
of course, between your Honor’s personal observation, and the obser¬ 
vation of a crowd of witnesses who testified to the contrary. Was your 
Honor ever conscious of being absolutely convinced, from the outset of 
the trial, that a certain person was guilty? If not, then you are more 
than human. Was your Honor ever conscious, as the trial proceeded, 
that it was impossible to conceal your opinion ? If not, then you are 
more than human. Well, what has happened in many Courts, and time 
and again when it does happen, it arouses the aggressive resistence of 
every advocate who understands his duty; and he would be false to his 
trust if it did not arouse him.” 

The Recorder was evidently embarrassed, and not at all pleased, 
but saw that a question of fact was raised by Mr. Choate, and that 
this question of fact involved a question of veracity. The Court then 
read the lawyers a homily on the duty of the profession with respect to 
their conduct in the presence of the Court, and terminated the proceed¬ 
ings by taking no further action.— Strong's Life, 141-3. 

“Mr. Choate, you are arguing contrary to what is stated in your 
brief.” 

“Oh, well, I have learned a great deal about this case since that brief 
was prepared.” 

Choate was once trying a will case in Rochester, N. Y., and trying 
to uphold the will, and was examining an old lady, who was the chief 
witness against him. She testified that the testatrix was a pal and crony 
of hers, and that she had talked with her just before making the will, 
and that she looked as if she did not understand what she was doing. 
The witness was an illiterate person, and Choate tried by questioning 
to get from her just how she looked. Finally he said to her, “Well, 
did she look just as I am looking at you now?” “After scanning me 
carefully,” said Choate, “she replied,” “Well, yes.”— Strong's Life, p. 150. 

CHARGING A CLERGYMAN A FEE 

“I always understood, Mr. Choate,” the clergyman observed, “that 
you gentlemen of the Bar were not in the habit of charging clergymen 
for your services.” 

“You are much in error,” returned Choate firmly, “much in error. 
You look for your reward in the next world, but we lawyers have to get 
ours in this.”— Strong's Life, 151. 

GEN’L FITZ-JOHN PORTER’S ARGUMENT 

Choate replied to Fitz-John Porter’s long argument in his ©wn behalf, 
appearing in full regimentals, with cocked hat, epaulets and spurs, while 
he indulged in an argument consuming 48 hours. Said Choate: 

“We have listened with patience to the remarks of the distinguished 
Adjutant General of the U. S. Army. His long argument reminds me 
of the advice once given to the graduating class in the Theological Sem¬ 
inary of Tennessee: ‘Now, boys, remember one thing, do net make 
long prayers; always remember that the Lord knows something.’ ” 

— Strong's Life, 155. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


145 


CALL ME A CAB 

Said an English flunky, mistaking Choate, for a cabman, while Am¬ 
bassador: “Call me a cab!” To wliich Choate responded: “You are a 
cab!” The nobleman naturally took offense, and explained to his host, 
but was placidly informed, it was his error in mistaking the American 
Ambassador for a butler. Full of apologies to Mr. Choate, he expressed 
regret that he did not know he was the American Ambassador. 

“Oh,” Mr. Choate replied, “pray don’t apologize, if I had known 
whom you were I would have called you a hansom.” 

SIDNEY BARTLETT 

“Mr. Bartlett was unlike Rufus Choate as one man could possibly 
differ from another. Cold and sharp, and glittering as steel, he would 
push aside all that the fancy and imagination of his adversary had 
brought into the case, and hold the courts to the main point, and the 
jury to one or two cardinal facts, which would compel them, if the ease 
made it possible, for his side. He was very learned, too, but had never, 
I believe, been such a student as his more celebrated adversary (Choate), 
and he had the rare advantage (I may say rare to a great lawyer) of ex¬ 
traordinary business experience and faculties, and an extreme common 
sense, which, after all, is the thing which ought to govern both Courts 
and juries. With a vast business always on hand, he never wore himself 
out by traveling on his nerves, to die at fifty-nine, as his chief opponent 
did, but lived a long, useful and happy life in the very front rank of the 
profession, and after arguing an important case in the Supreme Court 
at Washington, at the age of ninety, went home and died of old age.” 

— Martiris Life of Jos. H. Choate, Vol. 1, p. 86. 

LETTER TO HIS FATHER 

“Dear Father: 

“I want very much to have a first rate photograph of my father, and 
as he seems to have some very persistent scruples against submitting 
to the operation, I want to enlist your aid in my behalf. I think you have 
a gbod deal of influence with him, and if you represent the matter to him 
in its true light, I think you will readily overcome all his objections. 
He has, you know, now, a large number of descendants in two gener¬ 
ations, and is likely to have many more, and they demand some worthy 
memorial of him. They are as you must have observed, although they 
are not a demonstrative race, very fond of him, and whether rightly 
or wrongly they are particularly proud of his good looks. Well, as matters 
now stand if anything should befall him we should be utterly without 
any fitting counterfeit of his honored form and features. The immediate 
occasion of my mentioning the subject to you is just this, that he is going 
to Boston every day this winter, and if you will just take him by the arm 
some fine day and lead him into Whipple’s Photograph establishment, 
in Washington Street, you can get for us what we want, and will win 
for yourself the renewed gratitude of a family who owe their all to you. 

Yours very truly, 

JOSEPH H. CHOATE.” 

—1 Martin's Life of Choate, 215-16. 

FAVORED STUDY OF CLASSICS 

“Our study of the languages was in the main, while at college, limited 
to get the correct and full meaning out of every sentence, and to do that 
necessarily required great concentration and accuracy and perseverance, 
traits of enormous value in any subsequent pursuits, and without which 


146 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


any real success in them is hardly possible. * * * Accordingly I 

chose for my special studies Latin and Greek throughout my college 
course, and never had occasion to regret it, for the same mental exercises 
that required perfection in those subjects stood me well in hand all through 
the rest of my life in solving problems of law and diplomacy, or anything 
else that I had to work upon. I also found that committing to memory, 
although never required, was of infinite value as a mental discipline, 
and have always wondered why it has not been more generally kept 
up. When I graduated I could repeat from memory the whole of the 
first book of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ and many other valuable gems 
of English literature, and I wish that I had continued it until the present 
day, for I am sure that such a habit continued through a long life would 
keep the mind well stored with the most precious passages of English 
literature of all times and of every variety, and would be an infinite 
solace and satisfaction.” 

—From Choate's Autobiography, 1 Martin's Life, 75. 
INTELLIGENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS 

“There are 351 towns in the State of Massachusetts. In those, with 
the exception of seven, the public has the use of public libraries provided 
at the public expense. In these libraries there are three and three- 
quarters millions of volumes, about a volume and a half for each inhabi¬ 
tant of the State, and the circulation in twelve months amounted to seven 
and two-thirds millions, or three volumes for each inhabitant, men, 
women and children, and babies in arms. Can you point to any other 
country under the sun in which that state of things can be said to exist ? 
And is there not a refiex action of the readers and authors upon the 
readers? Might it not be owing to some such relation as that in these 
last sixty years there had been authors of such eminence in America? 
Massachusetts to which I have been referring in connection with this 
free libraries movement had, however, only led the way, for the last 
report of the National Bureau of Education to which I have had access 
showed that there were 4,000 free libraries in America, containing more 
than 33,000,000 volumes. * * * It is the ‘teachableness’ of all 

people who speak the English tongue that constitutes their great prosipect 
for the future. * * * Don Quixote, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ .and 

‘Compleat Angler and Robinson Crusoe’ are the most famous books 
handed down to the present generation. Time has sifted all literature, 
but how the united judgment of mankind has centered upon these four 
books out of all the really wonderful books which had been given the 
world, and how it has selected these masterpieces and given them such 
glory, and other valuable works had sunk into insignificance and almost 
into oblivion, it is really very hard to say. * * * jg p^own 

is that in each case the work was the ripe fruit of a matured judgment, 
for none of those books was written by young men.” 

— To the Author's Club, in London, Feb. 20, 1900. Strong's Life, 

3^0-3. 

A LOFTY CONCEPTION OF LAW 

“So long as the Supreme Court exists to be attacked and defended; 
so long as the public credit and good faith of this great nation are im¬ 
periled; so long as the right of property lies at the root of all civil govern¬ 
ment is scouted, and the three inalienable rights of life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness, which the Declaration of Independence proclaims, 
and the Constitution guarantees, are in jeopardy, so long will great 
public service be demanded of the Bar.” 

—From Address to the American Bar Assn., Strong's Life, 13^. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


147 


MULTIPLICATION OF BOOKS 

“According to the latest statistics which I have seen there were 
more than 70,000 different books produced in the year 1898 in Europe, 
exclusive of Russia and the United States. In Germany, the number 
was 23,000, France, 14,000, Italy, 9,000, Great Britain, 5,700, and in the 
United States, about 5,000. So that he who with knowledge is willing 
to guide others through only a small part of one part of one section of 
this hopeless labyrinth of books does them a vast service. * * * No 

nation can appropriate as its own a good book simply because it had 
been produced Avithin its borders. It became at once the property of 
the English-speaking race who would have it in all the continents and 
all the islands of the sea. And as all readers everywhere got the benefit 
of the brains of all authors, was it a mere fanciful dream, or would it 
only be realized in the distant future, in the millennium of English liter¬ 
ature, that all authors would get the reciprocal benefit of all this reading, 
without regard to international or colonial limits? * * * value 

and influence of great writers of English fiction, such as Scott, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Jane Austin and George Eliot, could not be overestimated. 
Their books continued to be issued in large editions on both continents. 
Scott’s delightful romances have found their way into every house 
where English is read. They can always be read with the same relish 
and zest as they had been devoured in the eagerness of youth. They 
were found in the dispatch-boxes of Ministers and Ambassadors, beneath 
the gowns of Bishops and Judges, in the knapsack of the soldier, the bunk 
of the sailor, and in the miner’s camp. Indeed, Scott has made Scotland, 
its magnificent scenery, its history, its heroes, and its delightful capital 
perfectly familiar and dear to all.’’ 

—From Address at Cheyne Hospital Charity, Mar. 18, 1907. Strong's 
Life, 33^. 

CHOATE’S DESCRIPTION OF CONKLING 

“My learned friend has been a little personal. He has seen fit to quote 
for your entertainment and that of the learned Court and this audience 
a description of my face and features that he gathered from a newspaper. 
I do not like to lie under this imputation and I will return it. But, 
gentlemen, not from any newspaper, oh no! I mil paint his picture 
as it has been painted by an immortal pen. I Avill give you a description 
of him as the divine Shakespeare painted it, for he must have had my 
learned friend in his eye when he said: 

“See what a grace is seated on his brow; 

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself; 

An eye like Mars to threaten and command— 

A combination and a form, indeed. 

Where every god did seek to set his seal, 

To give the world assurance of a man.’ ’’ 

— Strong’s Life of Choate, 190. 

GREAT CASES, PRINCIPLES INVOLVED 

“The Income Tax cases and that of Neagle who shot Judge Terry, 
in defending Mr. Justice Field, show his mastery of Constitutional ques¬ 
tions; the Bell Telephone eases of patent law; the Leland Stanford and 
Stewart Avill cases of testamentary law; the Bering Sea case of inter¬ 
national law; the cases of Hutchinson and Loubat against the N. Y. 
Stock Exchange, of the law of membership in unincorporated associa¬ 
tions; the Fitz-John Porter case of martial law; the case of the Republic 
against the Aurania, and his exposition before the second Hague Confer- 


148 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ence of ‘immunity of private property at sea,’ his grasp of admiralty 
law; the Gilbert Elevated Ry. cases, involving commercial law; the law 
of domestic relations and of injuries to persons and property, exhibit 
him as a master in widely different departments of jurisprudence.” 

— Strong’s Life of Choate, 15Ji.-5. 

RUFUS CHOATE AS AN ADVOCATE 

“Mr. Choate’s exuberant eloquence, with a mind richly stored with 
a vast wealth of reading and knowledge and an unbounded human sympa¬ 
thy made him, I think, the greatest advocate that America has ever 
known. In the argument of questions of law he was a very close reasoner, 
with a rich gift of illustration, so that it was almost impossible for him 
to lose a case that could possibly have been won; but it was his fascinating 
personality that carried all before him with the jury, he never overlooked 
a fact or an incident that could by any possibility aid his side of the case, 
and would form a theory upon the facts presented which would commend 
itself to his conscience and judgment and win, if it was possible to win, 
the approval of the jury. His patience, tenacity of purpose, and exceed¬ 
ing good humor would carry the day over any ordinary adversary. He 
would not only address the jury as a whole body, but would fasten upon 
each individual juryman in turn, of whose sympathy he was not already 
sure, and stick to him until he had mastered him, so that I have no doubt 
he occasionally won a verdict which any other man would have lost, 
and which, perhaps, he ought to have lost, altho from a long experience 
in jury trials I am satisfied that in nine cases out of ten, the jury decide 
right upon the evidence, whoever tries the case.” 

— Jos. H. Choate’s Address on Rufus Choate, 1 Martin’s Life of 
Jos. H. Choate, 85-6. 

CHARLES O’CONOR 

“Mr. O’Conor was by common consent the foremost pf the great 
lawyers of his day. In power of logic, in keen and incisive criticism, 
in fierceness of attack and defense, and in the complete mastery of the 
law he was certainly without a superior.”— 1 Martin’s Life of Choate, llJf.. 

JAMES T. BRADY 

“James T. Brady was one of the most delightful men I have ever met. 
He was a real orator and was largely engaged in defense of criminal cases, 
altho he was quite equal to any civil procedure that might arise; his 
striking personality as a witty and jovial Irishman fully made up for 
his lack of legal learning and entitled him to a place in the front rank. 
He was one of the dearest and most fascinating of men; always frank and 
open, having, so far as I could see, nothing to conceal and no desire to 
conceal anything, and he commanded a popularity far exceeding that 
which at that time, I think, any of his associates in the profession enjoyed. 
He was always in demand for great public meetings and never failed 
to make a first-rate speech.”— Choate’s Opinion, 1 Martin’s Life, 115. 

WILLIAM M. EVARTS 

“Taking him for all in all, Evarts was the quickest witted man that I 
have known on either side of the Water, and in the course of a long life 
I have met many of the foremost men of intellect and action, both here 
and in Great Britain. Nothing could possibly escape him, and his mind 
seemed to flash instantaneously, no matter what was the subject that 
engaged his attention. He was exceedingly fortunate, too, in being at 
the height of his powers during the most interesting period of our history. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


149 


Evarts was 38 when Choate went into his office, and it so happened that 
four or five of the greatest and most important causes that have ever 
engaged the attention of our courts came when he was at the head of 
the profession, and as such was naturally called upon to take a leading 
part in them. 

“The Lemrnon slave case, in the Court of Appeals at Albany, involved 
most interesting questions in regard to the application of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, and he was retained by the State of New York as counsel 
to maintain the right of the alleged slave to his liberty. It happens to 
few lawyers in a single life to be called on to lead in four such cases as 
the Geneva Arbitration, the Electoral Commission, the Impeachment of 
President Johnson, and the trial of the case of Tilton against Beecher. 
Evarts was on the winning side of all these great causes. * * * Thus 

it appears that Mr. Evarts easily held to the end of his days the well 
earned post of the greatest and most famous advocate at the American 
Bar.”— Choate’s Opinion, 1 Martin’s Life, 118 and 121. 

OGDEN HOFFMAN 

“Hoffman, who has long occupied the position of ‘the great orator 
of New York,’ died very suddenly a few days ago (Choate in a letter to 
his Mother, May 4, 1856). He began life as a midshipman and has had 
wonderful success, which was owing solely to his gift of speech. There 
has hardly been an important criminal case here for twenty years in 
which he did not appear on one side or the other. But he was a noto¬ 
riously lazy man and an extravagantly high liver but for which he would 
have won a still more brilliant and more extended fame.” 

^—Choate in letter to his Mother^ May 19, 1858; 1 Martin’s Life, 186. 

AN ECCLESIASTICAL FUNERAL 

“The horrors of an ecclesiastical funeral, may I for one escape! The 
idea of holding up one’s own father as having had a marrow escape from 
Hell, to his weeping children is such an outrage that I wonder the world 
has not long since exterminated all these vile priests who practice such 
arts. When will men learn that Death is as natural and as sure a Prov¬ 
idence as Birth, and no more to be dreaded or villified?” 

—1 Martin’s Life, 285. 

DON’T MARRY A LAWYER 

“If you wish to live for the holidays, you must next time marry some 
one else than a lawyer.”— From a letter to his wife, 1 Martin’s Life, 291. 

SUCCESS IN LAW IS A MATTER OP LUCK 

“The longer I practice law, and the more success I have, the more 
it seems to me to depend upon luck and the fancy of people.” 

—Said in 1878. 

THE GIST OF THE INCOME TAX CASE 

“The Constitution provides that direct taxes shall be apportioned 
among the States according to their respective numbers, but this Act 
levies all taxes upon income, from whatever source derived, indiscrimin¬ 
ately upon all alike, without such apportionment. A tax on land is 
certainly a direct tax within the meaning of the Constitution, and a tax 
upon the income of land can by no possibility be distinguished from a 
tax on land itself, for this is a tax on the land from which the rent is 
derived, and is, therefore, necessarily a direct tax upon the income of 


150 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


accumulated personal property, and cannot be distinguished in principle 
from the tax on rents, and these all being found to be direct taxes, and 
therefore unconstitutionally levied, the Court in annulling them must 
find that Congress without them would not have enacted the rest of the 
tax, and therefore must declare the whole act void.” 

— The Supreme Court of the U. S. did so decide. 

SUCCESS 

“Constant labor is happiness, and success simply means ability to do 
more labor, more deeds far-reaching in their power and effect. Such 
success brings about as much happiness as the world provides. We 
never know that enough has been done. The truth is that the men 
whose great efforts have made success possible for themselves are the very 
last to desire them. There is pleasure in rest after labor. It is gratifying 
to relax when you really need relaxation, to be weary and to be able to 
rest. But to enjoy anything you must feel the need of it.” 

—2 Martin's Life, 79-80. 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEPARTED 

“You know our own dead often exercise a very much more potent 
influence over us than any of our living associates. Time cannot loosen 
their hold on heart and mind. In one sense they never come back. 
In another and actual sense they are always coming back, especially 
in our hours of peril. We gain more support from them than from any 
living associate. Just as we hear distinctly the voice of a friend in Boston 
or Chicago over the telephone, and can tell whether it is a joyful or a 
sorrowful voice, so through the long distance telephone of time we hear 
voices with equal distinctness. In dreams—if they be dreams—we see 
the forms of our own dead. In danger we feel the support of their lov¬ 
ing hands.” 

—From speech Nov. 13, 1905, in United Charities Bldg., N. Y., 
in memory of Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. 

THE THINGS IN THE U. S. WE REVERENCE 

“Now, our Declaration of Independence, which the Lord Chancellor 
seems to have little doubt about, our Constitution of the U. S., which 
he has no doubt about, are only the natural sequence of Magna Charta 
and the Petition of Right. We stood for the same principles, we fought 
the same fight, we gained the same victory. Our Jefferson and FranMin 
and their associates in declaring independence, our Washington and 
Hamilton and their associates in organizing the Government of the U. S. 
and setting its wheels in motion, were only doing for us what Somers 
and his associates had done for you in 1688. Now you will not be surprised 
that in fateful events, which meant so much for the welfare of the world, 
and in which the lawyers took a very great part, these Inns of Court 
contributed their quota; and that there were five of the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence who had been bred to the law in the Middle 
Temple, and three of the framers and signers of the Constitution of the 
U. S. who had been bred in the same Inn, and one of them was after¬ 
wards nominated by President Washington as Chief Justice of the U. 
S. So you may well imagine with what delight I was informed a day 
or two ago that I had been made a Bencher of the great American Inn, 
the Middle Temple. I do not think any American lawyer has ever had 
such a success as that. They may have won more cases, they may have 
got more fees, but they never have been made Benchers of any of the 
Inns of Court.” 

— To the Bench and Bar of London, on his departure from England, 
as Ambassador, to the U. S., Apr. IJf., 1905. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


151 


CHOATE’S LOVE FOR THE LAW 

'‘I will confess that from the beginning to the end of my forty-four 
years at the Bar, I loved the profession with all the ardor of intensity that 
that jealous mistress, the law, could ever exact, and was always willing 
to pay back the debt which, as Lord Bacon says we owe to the profes¬ 
sion that honors us. In my younger days I could not resist the attrac¬ 
tion of those historic and dramatic scenes and incidents, in the lives of 
the world’s great advocates, which everybody knows. Who would not 
have given a year’s ransom, a year of his life, to have heard Somers, 
in the case of the Seven Bishops, in a speech of only five minutes, breaking 
the rod of the oppressor, winning the great cause, and at one bound 
taking his place, the foremost place, among the orators and jurists of 
England; or Erskine, the greatest advocate anywhere and of all time, 
when he dared to brave the mighty Mansfield’s admonition that . Lord 
Sandwich was not before the Court? ‘I know he is not before the Court 
and for that very reason I will bring him before the Court.’ He entered 
the tribunal that morning an absolutely briefless barrister, and went 
out of the Court with thirty retainers in his pocket and followed by a 
crowd of solicitors engaged in a race of diligence to see who should reach 
his chambers first. Who would not have given a year of his life to have 
heard Webster pleading before the Supreme Court of the U. S. for the 
little college in the hills, where his intellectual life began, and throwing 
successfully round it the shield of that most beneficent of all constitutional 
provisions that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation 
of contracts?” 

—From Speech in London, Eng., Apr. llf., 1905, on ‘The Bench 
and Bar.^ 

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

‘‘I read your article on ‘The Monroe Doctrine and the Great War’ 
with great pleasure. But I find it far from easy to agree wholly with any¬ 
body or anything connected with our relation to the War. I can’t 
agree with you that the Monroe Doctrine had much to do with bringing 
on the War; nor with Taft and Murray Butler that we should enter 
into a League to enforce Peace, which I regard as only another name for 
a League to make more war; nor with Eliot that we should enter into a 
League permanent and offensive and defensive with the Entente Nations 
to fight Germany and her Allies, because I think that would divide the 
world into two alliances ready to fight each other as they were before 
this horrible conflict began; nor with (Earl) Grey for a Federation of 
pretty much all the Nations.” 

—From letter to Moreton Frewen, June 30, 1916. 

THE WORLD WAR 

‘‘I am often asked what is going to be the end of all this. Is it a fact 
a century of united labors on the part of all the universities of the world, 
including this great University of Toronto and the McGill University 
have all been for nothing? Has civilization been thrown to the winds? 
Has liberty been entirely forgotten? Has justice ceased to be respected 
among men? And what is to be the end of all this? Well, by and by 
peace will come. We do not know when or how, but it will come, and the 
work of the universities will have to be resumed with greater ardor 
and, I believe, with greater success than ever before. I should like to 
recommend the motto of my own University of Harvard for general 
acceptance and as a guide of conduct for all the universities of the world. 
That motto is ‘Veritas,' the Truth. Harvard has flourished under that 
watchword for nearly three hundred years. There is only one thing 


152 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


that can hold civil society toegther. There is only one rule which can 
hold the nations of the world together in peace, and that is the law of 
good faith, and nobody knows it better than the men who are fighting 
in the trenches on your side and on the other side.” 

—From remarks at Toronto University, in Sept., 1915, which con¬ 
ferred the degree of LL.D. upon Mr. Choate. 

WM. G. PECKHAM’S ESTIMATE OF CHOATE AS A LAWYER 

“The great lawyers,” said Wm. G. Peekham, the well-known authority 
on elevated railroad land damage matters, “who w^ere Choate’s predeces¬ 
sors, such, for example, as his relative, Rufus Choate, tried trifling 
country law suits all their days, with an occasional case of magnitude, 
but even this involved an amount which would be inconsiderable in the 
present Choate’s practice. So it is with Erskine and Nicholas Hill, and 
even Daniel Webster. It is frequently remarked, in court circles, that the 
great lawyers who are Mr. Choate’s contemporaries divide among them 
one-half of the business of the first magnitude, and Mr. Choate has the 
other one-half himself. Now, why is it? His method goes right home to 
the human heart of a judge or the heart of a juryman, just the same as 
he reaches the centre of the affections of the Germans who go from 
Tompkins Square to Cooper Institute. Where other lawyers are solemn 
and portentous, or wild or otherwise unpleasant, Mr. Choate is humorous 
and human. Other lawyers in all the annals of legal eloquence tried to 
reach the human nature by some circuitous method, or by some method 
that human nature balked at. Mr. Choate talks just as high as the heart 
of the judge or juryman. He puts on no lofty airs, but often speaks 
with his hands in his pockets. He does not strive to stir up dark passions. 
While he is always a little keener than the man in the box or on the 
bench, yet he is always a brother man to him.” 

■—This was said by Mr. Peekham, when Choate was at the height 
of his legal career, in the late eighties of the last century. — Author. 

TRIBUTE TO ROSCOE CONKLING 

“However we may differ,” said Choate, in the trial of the David 
Stewart v. Collis P. Huntington case, in 1881 (Choate for plaintiff and 
Conkling for defendant), “one from another, or all us from him, we owe 
the Senator one debt of gratitude for standing, always, steadfast and 
incorruptible in the halls of corruption. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed- 
nego won immortal glory for passing one day in the fiery furnace, but 
he has been twenty years there, and has come out without even the smell 
of smoke upon his garments.” 

— The ex-Senator held this compliment in high esteem. — Author. 
VISCOUNT JAMES' BRYCE’S TRIBUTE 

“I can never forget the serene dignity-and sweetness of Choate’s old 
age when, at Stockbridge, in the calm softness of an Indian summer, 
his friends gathered round him and Mrs. Choate, rejoicing to pay their 
homage, on the occasion of the Golden Wedding, to a life that had rendered 
such noble service to two great countries; and beside the memory of that 
softly declining day I place in thought the sunset that came five years 
later, when, after welcoming the representatives of England and France, 
he passed from among us happy in the knowledge that that for which 
he had so earnestly hoped and striven had been achieved, and that his 
country had taken her stand as the champion of right and liberty in the 
greatest cause for which nations have ever fought.” 

—From letter to the Century Ass^n, Jan. 19, 1918. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


153 


ELIHU ROOT ON CHOATE 

“In this country of popular self-government, however, it did not 
satisfy him (Jos. H. Choate) to be successful in the trial of causes, or 
to win the respect and admiration of the Bar alone. To be a great Amer¬ 
ican lawyer in the broadest sense, one must be a great citizen, and Mr. 
Choate was that. He realized that our system of law striking its roots 
far back in the customs and struggles in which the liberties of England 
were developed, shaped by the fathers of the Republic to suit the con¬ 
ditions of a freer life, adapted from generation to generation to meet 
the new requirements of National growth, rests always upon the founda¬ 
tion of general public conviction that it is fit and adequate to secure 
justice and to preserve individual liberty. He knew that public respect 
for law, public confidence in the judicial system through which the law 
is administered, public faith in the wisdom and rightfulness of those great 
rules of conduct which we have written into our Constitution for the lim¬ 
itation of official power in its relation to the life, the liberty, and the proper¬ 
ty of the private citizen, are essential to the maintenance of the most vital 
rights which from day to day we assert in the courts. He welcomed the 
privilege of the American lawyer not merely to insist upon the appli¬ 
cation to his client’s ease of the principles of American law, but to assert 
and defend the principles themselves before the great governing body 
of American citizens who make and unmake the law. He understood 
that American lawyers cannot rightfully be a separate body cultivating 
a mystery, that they ought to be an active part of the citizenship of the 
country sharing in the formation and expression of its opinion, in its 
social and political life, and by virtue of their special knowledge and 
training, leaders of opinion among their fellows in the community.” 

— Fr^m Memorial Address before N. Y. Bar Ass’n., Dec. 20, 1917. 

A POWERFUL ADVOCATE 

“The law reports presented continually accumulating evidence of the 
most substantial basis of a lawyer’s reputation, for the reports of causes 
argued by him supported the judgment of those who heard or read the 
arguments that they exhibited a wide range of sound learning, extra¬ 
ordinary discrimination, capacity to divine crucial questions, and power 
of effective presentation. The reports gave evidence also of an extra¬ 
ordinary proportion of success in the causes tried and argued, continuing 
through so long a period of years as to be conclusive proof of the pos¬ 
session of those solid qualities of advocacy which alone command enduring 
success. This great preponderance of success in litigation was notwith¬ 
standing the fact that for so many years of his life his conspicuous merit 
as an advocate brought to him great numbers of difficult and doubtful 
cases, in which the parties sought to overcome a probability of defeat 
by superiority of counsel. As the generations of the profession passed, 
traditions gathered about the path he had traversed,—stories of his 
great achievements, of brilliant attack and desperate defense, of wonder¬ 
ful cross-examination and masterful argument, of wise and witty sayings, 
of humor and satire, of imperturbable self-possession and poise, of swift 
insight, of courage and audacity, told by judges and lawyers and jurors 
and court officers, were repeated wherever lawyers gathered, and became 
a part of the common professional knowledge of the history of the Bar.” 

—Elihu Root, on Choate, at N. Y. Bar Ass’n, 1917. 

JOSEPH H. CHOATE’S APPEARANCE 

“Nature was very kind to him. She gave him a sound body, 
a constitution capable of enduring without injury the strain of long 
continued and severe effort, and a temperament which saved him from 


154 


GEEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the exhausting effect of worries and fears and passions and vain regrets, 
and she gave a physical presence most impressive and attractive. He 
was tall, fully six feet in height, slender and erect in his early years, 
broad shouldered, and carrying the impression of poise and balanced 
strength; the leonine head was set perfectly in its place, and his face was 
luminous even in repose with the beauty of intellect and nobility of 
character, sublimated and manifestly active and dominant. His voice 
was clear, pleasing to the ear, and far carrying. I do not recall that he 
ever strained it, or seemed to be forcing it unduly. He was never orator¬ 
ical even in passages of greatest force and feeling. His manner was 
dignified and courtly, but perfectly simple and unaffected, and it was 
the same everywhere and to everybody. Forty odd years ago, when 
we were in the beginning of a friendship which has been for me one of the 
chief satisfactions and joys of life, I used to think that he was the most 
beautiful and splendid specimen of manhood I had ever seen. I have 
revised my judgment upon this; for ,after the Declaration of War with 
Germany, when he knew that the manhood and honor of his Country 
had re-asserted themselves, in the benign and radiant face with its lines 
of old experience and wisdom, made purer and gentler by trial and high 
endeavor, still alert with intelligence and feeling, shining with the joy 
of unselfish patriotism, and in the massive form bowed under the weight 
of a noble life, there was a beauty surpassing that of conquering youth; 
and the memory of it is a benediction.” 

—Elihu Root, Memorial Address, before N. Y. Bar Ass'n, Dec., 1917. 

CHOATE ON IMMORTALITY 

(The following reminiscence is given by Judge A. T. Clearwater, of 
Kingston, N. Y., as he and Choate were sitting in a Pullman on their way 
to New Brunswick, N. J.,—the seat of Rutgers College, whither Choate 
was going to be made an LL.D., in Oct., 1916);— 

“Somebody, I think Frank Stetson, tells me you are attending a church 
at Kingston (the N. Y. home of Judge Clearwater) with which your 
family has been connected for two hundred and fifty years.” (Said by 
Mr. Choate.) 

“That is true.” (Judge Clearwater.) 

“As you are a trustee of Rutgers, I assume you are a Calvanist.” 
(Choate.) 

“Well, I was born of a Calvinist family which has attended the Re¬ 
formed Dutch Church since the Reformation, a church which I have 
attended from my infancy, and I suppose I am a Calvanist.” (Clearwater.) 

“Then you believe in the immortality of the soul?” (Choate.) 

“You remember Stedman being at Franzen’s studio (at Bar Harbor) 
when that subject was discussed; well, when that portrait which you 
reviled was sent to my home at Kingston, Stedman and Franzen came 
up to visit us, and while they were there Stedman received from Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson a letter written by the Colonel on his eighty- 
fourth birthday in answer to one which Stedman had written congratu¬ 
lating him upon the event, and in that letter Colonel Higginson said that 
as the years went by, and the shadows lengthened, more and more he 
thought of the great question of the immortality of the soul. He had 
read the Darwins, Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, Haeckel, and the other 
evolutionists and materialists, and there was a time in his life when he had 
discredited any notion of survival after death. Subsequently he had 
oscillated like a pendulum from unbelief to belief, and back again, but 
now as the time was approaching when he finally must solve the great 
problem, his mind was at rest. He believed that the soul of man survived 
physical death.” (Clearwater.) 

“Clearwater, I have pondered much and long over this great question. 
I, too, have read the evolutionists and the materialists, the ancients and 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


155 


the moderns. You know I was born and brought up in Salem, a singularly 
puritanical communi y, and always the atmosphere, spiritual and in¬ 
tellectual of Salem has to some extent influenced my life, but I, too, 
am of the view of Colonel Higginson, and have concluded, as I soon must 
solve that grave question, that man does survive physical death, that his 
soul is immortal. Have you ever thought, as you worship in that old 
church at Kingston, that possibly the spirits of your long line of ancestors 
also were present ? Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t believe for a moment 
there is any communication between the spirits of the departed and the 
living, but it may be possible that they do frequent the scenes of their 
former activities, especially the place where they worshipped.” (Choate.) 

“Choate went on to talk most beautifully of the consolation afforded 
by a belief in immortality, of the emptiness of a life where such a belief 
was absent, of the vanity of human wishes and ambitions, the shallowness 
of worldy honors, and the absence of incentive to high and better living 
if man were destitute of a conviction that his soul was immortal.” (Clear¬ 
water.)— Martin’s Life of Choate, lt.16-18. 

CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS 

“What was the first condition of success? I have been a workman 
myself all my days. I have not worked with screws and bolts and ma¬ 
chinery, but I have worked at the law, and believe that the same qualities 
that account for success in one profession account for i in another. 
The one quality that cannot be dispensed with, that is indispensable, 
if a man is to advance, is absolute, incessant, undying tenacity of purpose. 
Benjamin Franklin, whose beginning was as humble as that of Stephen¬ 
son, but who lived to have it said of him that he ‘snatched the lightning 
from the clouds and the scepter from the tyrant,’ laid down some other 
rules for the attainment of success, such as temperance and frugality, 
and these rules are as applicable now as any time before. But success 
was not everything. Man wanted happiness as well, and the thing which 
conduced to this more than anything else was the cultivation of reading. 
Let workingmen, especially, cultivate this taste in themselves and in their 
family life, and nothing would do more to promote happiness of them¬ 
selves and those around them.” 

—Address at the Crewe Mechanical Institute, Eng. Strong’s Life 

of Choate, J. IL, 332-3. 

Jos. H. Choate, Salem, Mass., 1832-1917. Graduated from Harvard, 
1852, from its law department, 1854; admitted to membership in the 
firm of Evarts, Southmayd & Choate, 1859; appeared as counsel in 
many noted cases—e. g.. The Income Tax Case, The Tilden & A. T. 
Stewart will cases and the Leland Standford, Vanderbilt and Stokes 
will cases. Was the 5th child and 4th boy of Dr. George Choate; began 
to read at three years of age; his first fee was $2. He earned with Butler, 
Evarts & Southmayd, the first year $500, the next $800, and eventually 
became a partner; upon his death his law library was appraised at $8,892, 
and his general library contained 2,824 vols.; among the $2,700 worth 
of rare old wines in his cellars, in his own house, were 3 bottles of port 
vintage of 1715; more than 100 bottles of Madeira of 1836; many bottles 
of champagne of 1870 and 1874. His estate was appraised at $4,867,879. 

— Author. 


RUFUS CHOATE (1799-1859), Massachusetts 

AMERICA’S PAUCITY OF BOOKS 

“It has been often said that ‘Gibbon’s History’ could not have been 
written here for want of books. I suppose that Hallam’s ‘Middle Ages’ 
and his ‘Introduction to the Literature of Europe’ could not. Irving’s 
‘Columbus’ was written in Copenhagen. See how this inadequate supUy 
operates. An American mind kindles with a subject; it enters on an in¬ 
vestigation with a spirit and with an ability worthy of the most splendid 
achievement; goes a little way, finds that a dozen books —^ one book, 
perhaps— are indispensable, which cannot be found this side of Got- 
tengen or Oxford; it tires of the pursuit, or abandons it altogether, or 
substitutes some shallow conjectures for a deep and accurate research, 
and there is the end.” 

—From an Address on the Smithsonian Institute, United States 
Senate, in advocating a great library like the Bodelian, at Oxford. 

It is said that Carlyle gathered together nearly 2,000 books to write 
his ‘Frederick the Great.’— The Author. 

A NATURAL ACTION 

“Nonsense! You might as well drop the Greek alphabet on the ground 
and expect to pick up the Iliad.” 

—Said Choate, when someone said, a thing was not natural; and he 
further said, — Naturally, a man would walk down the streets with 
his 'pantaloons off.” 

CROSS-EXAMINATION 

'“Never cross-examine any more than is absolutely necessary. If 
you don’t break your witness, he breaks you; for he only repeats over in 
stronger language to the jury his story. Thus you only give him a second 
chance to tell his story to them. And besides by some random question 
you may draw out something damaging to your own cause.” 

— Parker's ^Reminiscences of Choate,' 16J/.. 

DEMOSTHENES 

“Demosthenes was a greater orator than Cicero. * * * He had in addition 
to iron logic and massive reason, an awful vehemence, perfectly tempes¬ 
tuous and boisterous; a diction, every word of which was clean cut and 
sterling, like stamped gold; a harmony of numbers also. Legare’s article 
in the New York Review on him is the best thing ever written in English 
about him. He was very commonsense and straightforward.” 

When Hillard said that he thouglit Demosthenes was somewhat of 
a humbug, “No such thing,” said Choate. “Why,” said Hillard, “the 
speech for the crown isn’t the greatest thing on earth. Webster’s Hayne 
speech was as great.” “No.” said Choate, “the Gothic language could 
not make such a speech as the Oration on the Crown. It hasn’t got 
words to make it out of, in the first place; and then consider, also, that 
it was a defense of the policy Demosthenes had pursued for thirty years. 
* * * The force of his genius and the fire of his mind and character broke 
through and conquered all,” 

— Parker's Reminiscences of Choate, 82, 2Jf5, 281^, 296. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


157 


CICERO 

“Cicero, especially, was his idolatry as a man, an orator and a writer.” 
says Parker. ^ Said Choate:—“Cicero said he never talked without 
trembling, until his own voice reassured him. * * * He stocked his vocabu¬ 
lary by translating Greek into Latin. * * * This head of Cicero is perfect. 
(He had busts of Demosthenes and Cicero, and engravings of Webster 
and Everett, in his library.) He was a true literary man, but early 
leaned towards oratory. * * * Cicero I have never read without being 
encouraged and strengthened; his views of life are always healthy and 
cheerful and sound. He was vastly vain. In one of his letters to Atticus, 
he says—^ T spoke with a divine poioer to the Senate. There was never 
anything like it.’ * * * His age is the descending age of Rome. And there 
is a vain sadness through it all. * * * He often fainted after speaking. 
He must be held the second best orator who ever spoke in all the world”. 

TACITUS 

“Tacitus’ was a far richer and more compact style than Cicero’s; 
his was a spoken style; but Tacitus was the Macaulay of antiquity. 
* * * He was too deep and _ capacious a nature to be content. He was 
deeply learned in Roman history, and, therefore, impregnated with the 
swelling sentiments of Roman history and grandeur. * * * You ought to 
read Tacitus over and over again to catch his idiom— a certain exact 
fidelity to the orginal is essential to improve it. In the Annals, particular 
lives are more valuable.” 


EDMUND BURKE 

“Mind that Burke is the fourth Englishman—Shakespeare, Bacon, 
Milton, Burke. No Englishman, or countryman of ours has the least 
appreciation of Burke. Out of Burke might be cut fifty Mackintoshes, 
one hundred and seventy-five Macaulays, forty Jefferys, and two hundred 
and fifty Sir Robert Peels, and leave him greater than Pitt and Fox 
together.”— From letter to Charles Sumner, probably in 

READING 

“Let the case of a busy lawyer testify to the priceless value of the love 
of reading. He comes home, his temples throbbing, his nerves shattered 
from a trial of a week, surprised and alarmed by the charge of the judge, 
and pale with anxiety about the verdict of next morning. With a super¬ 
human effort he opens his book, and in the twinkling of an eye he is 
looking into the full ‘orb of Homeric or Miltonic song;’ or he stands in 
the crowd—breathless, yet swayed as the forest or the sea by winds— 
hearing and to judge the Pleadings for the Crown; or the philosophy 
which soothed Cicero or Boethius in their afflictions, in exile, prison, and 
the contemplation of death, breathes over his petty cares like the sweet 
south; or Pope or Horace laughs into good humor; or he walks with 
Aeneas and the Sibyl in the mild light of the world of the laurelled dead; 
and the court-house is as completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre- 
adamite life. Well may he prize that endeared charm, so effectual and 
safe, without which the brain had long ago been chilled by paralysis, 
or set on fire of insanity!”— 1 S. G. Brownes Life of R. Choate, Jf.77. 

SIR JAMES SCARLETT 

“Scarlett was altogether the greatest advocate in England of modern 
times.”— ParkeFs Reminiscences of Choate. 


158 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


MATT CARPENTER ON CHOATE 

“Mr. Choate has been a member of this body (U. S. Senate); he stood 
at the head of the legal profession of his native State and had no superior at 
any bar, English or American. As an advocate he had no peer. In this 
department of the profession I do not believe his equal ever lived. A 
mass of uninteresting facts, the tedious details of the dryest subjects, 
touched by his magic wand, stood forth to the quickened apprehension of 
court or jury with the beauty and freshness of spring, and his nervous 
oratory and magnetic eloquence moved the tenderest emotions and 
strongest passions of men as the wind sways the forest. With inter¬ 
national and municipal law, and especially with constitutional law, he 
was entirely familiar. He was full of learning, but not encumbered by it, 
for the details of his knowledge were not attached to him like merchan¬ 
dise strapped to a dromedary, but were digested, assimilated, made part 
of himself by the fusing power of his transcendent genius.” 

— Matt. H. Carpenter, in the U. S. Senate. 

Carpenter had read law with Choate, who went the pupil’s security 
for $1,000 worth of law books, when the young lawyer moved to Beloit, 
Wis.; and further supported Carpenter for nearly two years, when the 
latter was nearly blind from over study. 

COMPROMISE 

“Why should we not engage ourselves to the finality of the entire series 
of measures of compromise? * * * The American people know, by every 
kind of evidence by which tuch a truth ever can be known, that these 
measures, in the crisis of their time, saved this nation. I thank God for 
the civil courage wliich, of all things dearest in life, dared to pass and 
defend them and ‘has taken no step backward.’ i rejoice that the 
healthj^ morality of the country, with an instructed conscience, void of 
offence towards God and man, has accepted them. Extremists denounce 
all compromises ever. Alas! do they remember such is the condition of 
humanity that the noblest politics are but a compromise, an approxi¬ 
mation—a type—a shadow of good things—the buying of great bless¬ 
ings at great prices? Do they forget that the Union is a compromise, 
the constitution—social life—that the harmony of the universe is but the 
music of compromise, by which the antagonisms of the infinite Nature 
are composed and reconciled? Let him who doubts—if such there be— 
whether it were wise to pass these measures, look back and recall with 
what instantaneous and mighty charm they calmed the madness and 
anxiety of the hour! How, in a moment, the uninterrupted and parted 
currents of fraternal feeling reunited! Sir, the people came together 
again as when, in the old Roman history, the tribes descended from the 
mount of Secession—the great compromise of that Constitution achieved 
—and fiowed together behind the eagle into one mighty host of reconciled 
races for the conquest of the world. Well, if it were necessary to adopt 
these measures, it is not necessary to continue them? * * * Why not, 
then, declare the doctrine of their permanence? In the language of 
Daniel Webster, ‘Why delay the declaration? Sink or swim, live or die, 
survive or perish, I am for it’.” 

— Choate in the Whig Convention of 1852, in which he was for 

Webster for President. 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

“Webster is either very ordinary in discourse, or very great. I have 
heard him for a few minutes, when there could be no greater learning, or 
literature, where there is no great thought to be elaborated, or lofty 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


159 


sentiment to be pronounced, he halts and drags. This is the ease even 
in his very best orations. Out of law and statesmanship, he is not rich, 
and we have in him no sparkle or gleam of allusion and reference to 
quicken our fancies; but he flies high, or else creeps sluggishly along. 
* * * There has been no day in his life, for th'rty years, that his mind 
hasn’t been laboriously and seriously exercised. Eight or nine hours a 
day enough for all work, legal and literary. * * * He has been occupied 
in politics and general reading a good deal. His mind is far richer than 
Story’s—more ideas; though Story is great.” 

THE LAW 

“Unless one takes hold of the law with a determination to be a great 
lawyer, it’s a poor concern, and uninteresting; but a love of it may he be¬ 
gotten. After mastering its rudiments, it is, with all its rewards, as inter¬ 
esting and attractive as any other department of serious, laborious 
thought. * * * A mind capable of excelling in moral philosophy or in 
pure mathematics ought to succeed in law. * * * i i^w, because 
being of positive nature, it is—unlike morals and polities— sure ground. 
You feel a degree of certainty in reading the exposition of a topic. A 
mind confined exclusively to law is narrow, and not of a high order. Other 
and various learning is indispensable, as we gather clearness from seeing 
things in various relations. Coke and Bacon were universally learned. 
A legal mind fully content and satisfied with law rests on arbitrary col¬ 
lections of decrees. If I could not get any time from my law, for liberal 
and grateful studies, I’d give up all law from my present ease. What 
wear; upon me is not study but fatigue and responsibility of courts. 
My nervous attacks cease when I intermit courts.” 

—Parker s Reminiscences, 2Jf.O and 2Jf.5. 

It has been said that Choate could have written as good a history of 
Greece as Thirl wall or Grote.— Author. 

Says E. P. Whipple: “As to his own method of learning the history 
of Greece, it may be affirmed that he studied the works of the Greek 
orators, philosophers, and historians in order to become mentally a 
citizen of Greece, and thus to look at Greek life through a Greek’s eyes. 
By his realizing imagination, he instantly nullified the hard conditions 
of time; sent his mind and heart back 2,000 or 2,500 years to contemplate 
a civilization entirely different from ours; and often, while he was striding 
around Boston Common in the age of Buchanan, he was really making 
himself a contemporary of Pericles. His imagination was in ancient 
Athens, while his body was in what is ironically called ‘the modern 
Athens’.”— E. P. Whipple's ^Recollections of Eininent Men,' 59-60. 

When the late Jas. T. Field was collecting and editing Thos. De- 
Quincey’s Works he showed Choate an article which had appeared in some 
magazine with no external evidence as to the author. Mr. Choate said it 
was written by De Quincey. Mr. Fields wrote De Quincey, who answered 
that he had not written the papers, and never thought of the subject 
matter of it. With some exultation, Mr. Fields showed that letter to 
Mr. Choate, who said, “Never you mind; let me have the article again, 
and I will go over it more carefully!” He did so, and the next day wrote, 
“De Quincey did write it, De Quincey to the contrary, notwithstanding.” 
After a time, De Quincey sent Mr. Fields the original manuscript of the 
article with a letter, stating that he had found it among old papers; 
and it was the work of his pen, he must confess the authorship, though 
all recollection of it had passed away. 

— Neilson's Memoirs of Choate, p. 66. 


160 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


When Judge Wild was told that Worcester had gotten out a new 
dictionary, with 10,000 new words in it, the Judge exclaimed: “Mercy 
on us! I hope Choate won’t get hold of it.” (Prof. Kellogg figured out 
his vocabulary contained 11,693 words.) 

JAMES K. POLK 

“We will return James K. Polk to the Convention that discovered him!” 
—Rufus Choate—To the Boston Whigs, during the Polk campaign. 

‘ INTERPRET THE LIBRETTO 

“Interpret to me this libretto, lest I dilate with the wrong emotion.” 
—Rufus Choate—to his daughter at an Italian opera. 

A PRECEDENT 

“I wi 1 look, your honors, for a precedent, although it would be a pity 
that the Court should lose the honor of being the first to establish so 
just a rule.”— To a Court who wanted a precedent, for Choate's position. 

“AMICUS CURIAE” 

“I know that my time is exhausted, but as Amicus Curiae (a friend of 
the court) I should like to make a few suggestions to your Honors.” 
—Choate to a Court, who told him his time was up. 

HIS BOOKS 

“If I were to go to Newport for pleasure without my books, I should 
hang myself before evening.” 

—Choate to a friend who taunted him for taking a trunkful of books 
to the seaside resort. 

WHEN BEATEN IN U. S. SUPREME COURT 

“The Court has lost its little wits. Please let me have (1) our brief, 
for the law; (2) the defendant’s brief, for the sophistry; (3) the opinion 
for the foolishness; and never say die.” 

—Choate to his associate counsel, when they had been beaten in Court. 

HAY-SEED JURY 

“Oh, the law on our side is strong as thunder, but (wdth a slight shrug 
of his shoulders) what those bovine and bucolical gentlemen' from Berk¬ 
shire may say, God only knows.” 

— Choate to an anxious client, just before the trial. 

SUMNER’S “GRANDEUR OF NATIONS” 

“Must I give up ThermopylaB and Marathon and Sempach, and 
Waterloo! Come, Lieber, to my den; don’t bother Sumner any more. 
I have something to discuss with you; and we will fight it out, yard-arm 
to yard-arm, to our heart’s content. Our dear Charles will be sufficiently 
punished for his heresies on military glory by less redoubtable antagonists 
than you. Come along, I say!” ^ 

— Choate to Francis Lieber who, the morning after Sumner's J^th 
of July oration, on the True Grandeur of Nations," was assailing 
the orator for his extreme views of the policy and duty of peace. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


161 


BRING ON THE NEXT 

“I sometimes feel, when a case has gone against me, like the Baptist 
minister who was baptising in winter a crowd of converts through a 
large hole in the ice. One brother—Jones, I think—disappeared after 
immersion and did not reappear; probably drifted ten or fifteen feet from 
the hole, and was vainly gasping under ice as many inches thick. After 
pausing a few minutes, the minister said: ‘Brother Jones has evidently 
gone to kingdom come; bring on the next.’ Now, I am not unfeeling, 
but after all has been done for a client that I can do—and I never spare 
myself in advancing his legal rights—the only thing left for me is to 
dismiss the ease from my mind, and to say ^ith my Baptist brother, 
‘Bring on the next’.” 

— Choate to a legal friend, who asked him, if he didn’t worry over 
losing cases. 

CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS ^ 

“Good heavens, my dear fellow! my constitution was all gone years ago, I 
and I’m living on the by-laws.” f 

—Choate to a friend who told him he was ruining his ^constitution’^ 
by not taking enough exercise. 

A SUGGESTIVE DICTION 

“You don’t want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught 
from the air, common and unsuggestive; but you want one whose every 
word is full-freighted with suggestion, with beauty and power.” 

— Choate on Choice of W rds. 

THE LAWYER’S VACATION 

“I’m going to write a book. I’ve got as far as the title page and a 
motto. The subject is, ‘The Lawyer’s Vacation,’ and the motto, I have 
forgotten. But I shall show that the lawyer’s vacation is the space 
between the question put to a witness and his answer.” 

—Choate on the leisure of a busy lawyer. 

NATURE 

“Nature herself will have no great things hastily formed; in the direct 
path to all beautiful and conspicuous achievements she heaps up difficulty; 
to the largest animal she appoints the longest sleep in the parent womb.” 

— Choate’s Journal of Readings and Actions. 

CARRY THE JURY 

“Carry the jury at all hazards; move heaven and earth to carry the 
jury, and then fight it out with the judges on the law questions as best 
you can.” — Choate on the trial of a case. 

WOMAN’S FROWN 

“Woman’s frown can disappoint the proudest aim.” 

FAITH IN HIMSELF 

“If I live, all blockheads which are ^aken at certain mental pecu¬ 
liarities shall know and feel a reasoner, a lawyer, and a man of business.” 

— Choate’s Journal of Readings and Actions, 


162 ! 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 

THE STATE 

“The grandest of the works of man, grander than the pyramids, 
or Iliads, or systems of the stars, is the State.”— Choate. 

WOMAN 

“With our sisters of the Republic, less or more, we would live and we 
would die, ‘one hope, one lot, one life, one glory’.”— Choate. 

A PARTY 

“We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep 
step to the music of the Union.’ — Choate's letter to Whig Convention. 

. CLIENT—A LIAR 

“What a liar our client is,” said Benj. F. Butler, junior counsel with 
Choate,—the latter looking at Butler, with melancholy eyes, replied, 
“I would not say that, Mr. Butler; call him an inventor rather.” 

— H. C. Lodge's Early Memories," 52. 

NEUTRALITY 

“Neutrality in any sharp civil dissension is cowardly, immoral and 
disreputable.’ — Rufus Choate. 

THE BIBLE 

“I would have it read not only for its authoritative revelations and 
its commands and exactions, obligatory, today and forever, but for its 
English, for its literature, for its pathos, for its dim imagery, its sayings 
of consolation and wisdom and universal truth. Especially must one 
study it daily, and cultivate a love for its words and style. He thus may 
become a good English scholar. As Macaulay truly says,—‘A person 
who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of the English language ought 
to have the Bible at his fingers’ ends’.” 

— ‘Neilson's Memories of Choate', 91 and 214-. 

CROSS-EXAMINATION 

Choate said to a witness,—“Well, what did he say? Tell us how and 
what he spoke to you.” “Why,” said the witness, “he told us there was 
a lawyer in Boston, named Choate, and he’d get us off if they caught us 
with the money in our boots." 

HOW AND WHAT WALTER SCOTT WROTE 

“Scott selects, first, the country in which he will lay the scenes of his 
action—Scotland, perhaps, or merry England, or the beautiful France. 
He marks off the portion of that country within which the leading inci¬ 
dents shall be transacted, as a conjurer draws the charmed circle with his 
wand on the floor of the Cave of Magic. Then he studies the topography 
of the region—its scenery, its giant mountains, its lakes, glens, forests, 
falls of water—-as minutely as Malte Brun or Humbolt; but choosing out 
with a poet’s recollections, the grand, picturesque, and graceful points 
of the whole transcendent landscape. Then he goe"^ on to collect and 
treasure, up the artificial, civil,'’historical features of the country. He 
explore its antiquities, becomes minutely familiar with every city and 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


163 


castle and cathedral which still stands, and with the grander ruins 
of all which have fallen.—familiar with every relic and trace of man 
and art,—down even to the broken cistern which the Catholic charity 
of a former age had hewn out by the wayside for the pilgrim to drink in. 
He gathers up all the traditions and legendary history of the place,— 
every story of ‘hopeless love, or glory won,’—with the time, the spot, 
the circumstances, as particularly and as fondly as if he had lived there 
a thousand years. He selects the age to which his narrative shall refer,— 
perhaps that of Richard or Elizabeth, or Charles the Second, or the rebel¬ 
lion of 1745; and forthwith engages in a deep and discursive study of its 
polities; the state of parties, the character and singularities of the reigning 
king_ and his court, and of the prominent personages of the day;—-its 
religious conditions, the wars, revolts, revolutions, and great popular 
movements; all the predominant objects of interest and excitement, and all 
which made up the public and out-of-door life and history of that partic¬ 
ular generation. He goes deeper still;—the state of society; the manners, 
customs, and employments of the people; their dress, their arms, and 
armor; their amusements; their entire indoor and domestic life; the 
rank and accomplishments of the sexes respectively; their relations 
to each other; the extent of their popular and higher education; their 
opinions, superstitions, morals, jurisprudence and police,—all these he 
investigates as ea nestly as if he were nothing but an antiquarian, but 
with the liberal, enlightened, and tolerant curiosity of a scholar, phi¬ 
losopher, philanthropist, who holds that man is not only the most proper 
but most delightful study of man. Thus thoroughly furnished, he chooses 
an affecting incident, real or imaginary, for the ground-work, and rears 
upon it a composition—which the mere novel reader will admire for its 
elegant style, dazzling poetry, and elaborate art; the student of human 
nature for its keen and shrewd views of man—‘for each change of many- 
colored life he draws’ the student of history for its penetrating devel¬ 
opment and its splendid, exact, and comprehensive illustration of the 
spirit of one of the marked ages of the world. And this is aWaverley 
Novel!” 

Lecture ‘The Importance of Illustrating New England History by 
a Series of Romances, like the Waverley Novels. Delivered at Salem, 
Mass., 1833; 1 Samuel Gilman Brown’s Works of Rufus-Choate, 321-3. 

— Author. 

Rufus Choate: ‘‘Whoever tried to break the chain of his logical, 
graceful imagery was sure to find links of steel benea'h the garland of 
flowers.”— Anon. 


SIR EDWARD CLARKE (1841- ), England 

A RETROSPECTION—SIR EDWARD CLARKE 


“During all my years of absorbing professional work, years spent 
in learning and forgetting the details of the quarrels of others, or of the 
perpetual conflict between law and crime, there had often come to my 
mind the pathetic opening lines of one of Trench’s finest sonnets:— 

“ ‘To leave many lands unvisited, 

To leave so many glorious books unread.’ 

I had tried to use to the full my opportunities of travel, and I had often 
hoped that ‘in those may-be years I had to live, some short space of quiet 
time might be granted me to turn back to those pleasures of literature which 
had been the delight of my boyhood. The famous passage in which 
Nicolo Machiavelli, in the year when his political employments ceased, 
described in a letter to his friend the joys of a library often haunted 
my thoughts. 

“ ‘But when evening falls I put off my country habit filthy with mud and 
mire, and array myself in royal court garments. Thus worthi’y attired 
I make my entrance into the ancient courts of the men of old, where they 
receive me with love, and where I feed upon the food which only is 
my own, not ^or which I was born. They, moved by their humanity, 
make answer:— ‘for four hours’ space I feel no vexation. Poverty 
cannot frighten, nor death appall me.’ 

“My library is richer than that of the famous Plorenti e, for he had only 
the literature of Italy, in its ancient or its modern tongue, while I, subject 
to limitations of language, have all the wealth of the four centuries which 
have passed since he wrote those words. Those limitations are, indeed, 
sometimes irksome, when I think of the fortunate ones to whom the 
circumstances of their youth have given the opportunity of learning to 
enjoy in their original beauty the masterpieces of the great writers of 
class’c times. But I do not think of them with any soreness of envy. 
Aeschylus, Plato, and Vi’"gil are not for me. But I have Shakespeare, and 
Bacon, and Milton, and all their troop of worthy successors, and I feel 
no n ed of more. Others may feed in a wider pasture, but they have no 
better food. And here I have passed from the labor of life to its time of 
refreshment. I am sitting in my library—I planned the house, so of 
course it is the largest room—surrounded by my books. On the top of 
the low book shelves stand a few choice bronzes, Voltaire and Rousseau 
among them, and some fine specimens of my favorite Martin-ware. 
On the walls are some proofs of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur and the 
likenesses of Pitt and Pox, and Canning, and Wellington, and Peel. 

“Chief treasures of all are Biscombe Gardner’s portraits of my great 
master in politics (Disraeli), as he stood in the House of Lords in 1878 
and spoke of the Berlin Treaty; and his favorite clock which now stands 
upon my mantel-shelf. 

“I look from the windows over the green turf of the church grounds, 
and across the silver stream, and through the thinning autumn leaves 
see the low outline of the Surrey hills. There could be no sweeter sur¬ 
roundings, and I turn back to my desk in full contentment to write the 
closing pages of this book.”— 'The Story of My Life’ 4-10-12. 

PEN-PICTURES OF CONTEMPORARIES OF SIR EDWARD 
CLARKE, BALLENTINE AND GIFFARD—HIS IDEAI.S 

“It was by watching the methods and studying the causes of the suc¬ 
cess of the two greatest leaders of the Criminal Bar—Sergeant William 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


165 


Ballentine and Hardinge Giffard—that I trained myself for the work 
of later years. Ballentine, rather over middle height, lean and hard, 
with the eye of a hawk; a voice capable of many tones, but with a curious 
drawl, half infirmity and half affectation. A man of slight legal knowledge, 
of idle and pleasure-loving habits, but an advocate of quite extraordinary 
skill. He could rise to great eloquence, but his great power was in his 
cross-examination, which was the most subtile and deadly that I ever 
heard. There was a great fascination about him; whenever he was in 
court he was the most conspicuous person there, and seemed by instinct 
to lead or coerce or dominate judge and witness and jury. His temper was 
violent, his humor bitter and sarcastic, but he was the most generous of 
leaders. Once at Kingston, before Sir Alexander Cockburn, in a S. E. Ry. 
case, which he had not read, I was rather importunate in my suggestions, 
and he turned on me in Court, with ‘Damn you, sir, am I conducting this 
case or are you?’ But before the trial was over he explained to the jury 
that I had been right, and had only been reminding him of facts which he 
ought to have known. 

“Hardinge Giffard was short of stature, not distinguished in appearance 
or manner, with a voice which though loud and clear was somewhat harsh 
and had no persuasive tones in it. Giffard was by his industry (I am 
speaking of his early years in silk), by his great knowledge of law, his 
strong masculine sense, his indomitable courage, and his excellence‘in 
the a”t of arranging and narrating facts, one of the most formidable of 
advocates. His scrupulous and absolute fairness gave him great influence 
with juries, and his reply in a criminal case was always worthy of study 
and imitation. Closely associated with him as I was for many years, 
I have not seen much of him in private life since he became Lord Chan¬ 
cellor, but it has been pleasant to see my old friend and companion develop 
into the greatest judge before whom I ever practiced.” 

—'The Story of My Life\ — 81-2. 

SIR HENRY JAMES 

“Sir Henry James, Attorney-General, in 1882, was a man of great 
ability and of high character, and did honor to himself and his profession, 
when four years later, he refused its greatest prize, the Lord Chancellor¬ 
ship of England, rather than assist in setting up a Home Rule Govern¬ 
ment in Ireland. As an advocate he was skilful, but not very courageous, 
for fear of losing a case, often settled it, when with a little more energy and 
persistence he might have won. But his handsome person, and genial 
manners, suave and dignified eloquence, made him a personal favorite in 
the Courts and in the House of Commons.— Life 206. 

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 

“Lord Randolph Churchill’s temper was fickle as April and stormy 
as October. It is truly said in Winston Churchill’s brilliant life of his 
father, one of the best political biographies in our language, that—‘No 
one could tell what he would do, or by what motive, lofty or trivial, 
of conviction, or caprice, of irritation or self-sacrifice he would be gov¬ 
erned’.”— Life, 2H. 

CHARLES DILKE 

“In 1885, Sir Charles Dilke showed only a few months before the wreck 
of his political career, qualities and capacities which promised to make 
him one of the foremost English statesmen of his time. His extra¬ 
ordinary industry; the fullness and exactness of his knowledge, his per¬ 
fect tact and temper in dealing with questions every one of which had 
a special and peculiar importance to some member or group of members 


166 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


in the. House; the air of impartiality with which he did everything that 
was possible to give an advantage to his own side,—these deserved to 
be remembered with gratitude by those who were his colleagues.”— Life 313. 

IN THE VAN OF CIVILIZATION 

“We claim that we are in the very van of the civilization of mankind. 
Our ships are on every sea; our traders are in every market our English 
tongue is fast becoming the language of the world. On every distant 
continent there are growing up colonies sprung from our loins and carry¬ 
ing forward our traditions of freedom and of order. Let us rise to our 
great mission. Let us show that we are capable of a calm and patient 
and manly spirit in dealing with international affairs—prompt to resent 
insult, steadfast in the protection of our countrymen under whatever 
government they live; but at the same time having the manliness to 
acknowledge mistakes which we ourselves have made, to make allowance 
for the ignorance, for the prejudice, for the suspicions of others—and to 
remember that it is easier and nobler for the strong to be generous than 
it is for the weak to be submissive. So shall we show to the world the 
policy and pattern of a Christian State, so shall we give the world the 
bjessings of peace, and give, too, to the dear country of our birth the 
greatest of all honor it can have.” 

—In Public Speech, 1890 and 1900. Life, 11^6 ajid 352. 

HOW TO PERPETUATE AN ADVOCATE’S CAREER 

“There is one way in which an advocate may seek to secure some 
longer recollection of his work. Oratory has a literature of its own. 
The delightful and sadly neglected art of rhetoric finds its best illus¬ 
tration in forensic speech, and if an advocate addresses himself to his 
work, not only to the practical end of securing a verdict, but with the 
desire that his speeches shall have some literary quality, there is a pos¬ 
sibility that they may be remembered later.” 

—‘Farewell to the Bar'', Life, 416-17 

CLARKE’S AIM—POLITICAL 

“I did not come to the Bar from any attraction for the study of law, 
but I came to the Bar because I believed that through this profession 
and through this alone, I might be able to make my way to political 
infiuence and position.”— Life, 412 . 

EXCUSES 

“A man who is good at excuses is never good at anything else.” This 
maxim was so impressed upon the youthful Clarke, by an employer,— 
Charles Davis, while in the latter’s employ at eighteen, that the lawyer 
adopted it as a maxim.— Life, 50. 

Sir Edward Clark having laid up at the age of 20, $2165, then began 
the study of law, got the Tancard studentship, for six years, by 
competitive examination, which paid him $475 annually; then a job 
reviewing books on the Morning Herald & Standard, at $10 a week, 
writing 4 columns a week, during 3 years,—making $2080 a year, and 
attended Chancery Court, hearing Cairns, Palmer, Mellish,, and Rolt; 
took up the study of rhetoric—“An art,” he said, “so valuable, so 
essential to the advocate who Avishes to be something more than a des¬ 
ultory prattler”; was admitted to the Bar at 23; said he determined to 
be a great speaker, and therefore studied Whately, Aristotle, Quintilian 
and Cicero (the classic authors in translation) were his teachers, and 
Erskine, Plunket, etc., of the moderns; his income in law the first year 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


167 


was $500, the second $1000, third, $1200; and from 1868 to 1907—40 
years, his income averaged $50,000 a year; in 1886 he bought a home— 
named by him, “Thorncote,” on the Thames river, with 8 acres of land, 
for $32,000 (the cost of the house alone, 20 years before); built and 
furnished a church near his home which cost him $62,500. 

CROSS-EXAMINATION 

“It is a very useful general rule that you should not cross-examine 
when you cannot contradict. By provoking a repetition of the story 
you fix it on the minds of the jury, and you run the risk of the mention 
of some fresh detail which may be a strong, perhaps conclusive evidence 
of its truth.”— Life, 

THE GREAT MASTERS OF DEBATE 

“In my time, the great masters of debate were Disraeli, Gladstone, 
Balfour, and Asquith.”— Life, 212. 

LIVE WITHIN YOUR INCOME 

“The best way to realize the pleasure of feeling rich is to live in 
a smaller house than your means would entitle you to have.”— Life, 9i. 

FIRST DUTY OF A STATESMAN 

“I trust our leaders will recognize that when we are anxious to extend 
the area of our trade and gain for ourselves imperial renown, we must 
never forget that the first duty of a statesman is to the poorest of the 
people, and that to every statesman worthy of the name the welfare of 
the people is the highest law.”— Life, 385,—In House of Commons, 1906. 

MORLEY’S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

“Henry Morley’s ‘History of English Literature’ is by far the best of 
its kind in our language.”— Clarice's opinion, — Life, 51. 

AUTHOR OF IMPORTANT LAW 

Clarke was instrumental in getting a law passed by Parliament to 
remove the rule which prevented a person charged with crime from giving 
evidence on his own behalf, and which would not permit his wife to be called 
as a witness. It took 28 years to carry such a law through. It was adopted in 
1898.—Life, 339. 

REFUSED MASTERSHIP OP THE ROLLS 

Clarke refused, at the hands of Lord Salisbury, in 1897, the Mastership 
of the Rolls, thinking it would deprive him of a brilliant Parliamentary 
career.— Life, 336. 


HENRY CLAY (1877-1852), Kentucky 

SCHOULERS’ CHARACTERIZATION 

“Though surpassed in the separate endowments, no American states¬ 
man and legislator has ever equaled Clay in the triple conabination of 
eloquence, personal influence and creative power in legislation.” 

—James Schouler, — Jf. U. S. History, Jf.71. 

A PLEA FOR THE UNION 

“I am the candidate for no office. I never expect to be the candidate 
for any office the American people can give me, united or separated. If 
I can but appease the storm now raging in the Union, my ambition is 
gratifled—gratified—gratified. I ask for no more—I desire no more than 
to see us once more, as a band of brothers, linked in a common fraternity. 
Let me do this, pass this bill—and I will retire with content to the lawns 
and groves of Ashland. I will there, among those I love, solace a heart too 
often wounded in public life'—with the calmness and repose of domestic 
tranquility — and from my friends and my family, I shall meet that cordi¬ 
ality and that sympathy I now so ardently admire. They know me—they 
understand me. I appeal to my God and to them for the sincerity of 
my motives. Yes, I have ambition, but it is the ambition of being the 
humble instrument, in the hands of Providence, to reconcile a divided 
people—once more to revive concord and harmony in a distracted land. 
The pleasing ambition of contemplating the glorious spectacle of a free, 
united, prosperous, and practical people.” 

—Henry Clay,—Bill to Modify the Tariff. 

SECESSION UNCONSTITUTIONAL 

“I have said that I thought there was no right on the part of one or 
more states to secede from the Union. I think so. The Constitution 
of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then 
existed, but for posterity—unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual 
posterity. And every state that then came into the Union, and every 
state that has since come into the Union, came into it binding itself, by 
indissoluble bands to remain within the Union itself, and to remain with¬ 
in it by its posterity forever. Like another of the sacred connections, 
in private life, it is a marriage which no human authority can dissolve or 
divorce the parties from. And if I may be allowed to refer to some 
examples in private life, let me say to the North and to the South, what 
husband and wife say to each other: ‘We have mutual faults; neither 
of us is perfect; nothing in the form of humanity is perfect; let us, then, be 
kind to each other—forbearing, forgiving each other’s faults—and above 
all, let us live in happiness and peace together.’ * * * Dissolution of the 
Union and war are identical and inevitable. * * * Look at all history, consult 
her pages, ancient or modern—look at human nature; look at the contest 
in which you would be engaged in the supposition of war following upon the 
dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested; and I ask you if it is 
possible for you to doubt that the final disposition of the whole would be 
some despot treading down the liberties of th-e people—the final result 
would be the extinction of this last and glorious light which is leading 
all mankind, who are gazing upon it, in the hope and anxious expectation 
that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be diffused through¬ 
out the whole of the civilized world. Sir, can you lightly contemplate 
these consequences? Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


169 


amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far too tame of what the 
result would be if that direful event to which I have referred should ever 
occur ? Sir, I implore gentlemen, I adjure them whether from the South or 
the North, by all that they hold dear in this world—by all their love of 
liberty—by all their regard for posterity—by all their gratitude to Him 
who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless blessings— 
—by all the duties which they owe mankind—and by all the duties which 
they owe themselves, to pause, solemnly to pause at the edge of the 
precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap is taken into the yawning 
abyss below, from which none who ever take it shall return to safety. 

“Finally, Mr. President, and in conclusion, I implore, as the best 
blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me, upon earth, that if the direful 
event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not surAuve 
to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle.” 

—Henry Clay, Senate Chamber, Feb. 6, 1850. 

Says Parton: “He had a power over a Kentucky jury such as no man 
has ever had: not a very able lawyer, but a brilliant, successful practi¬ 
tioner, and had amassed a competence after ten years at the bar.” 

Webster said: “Clay probed nothing to the bottom. * * * He was not 
a student, not a thinker, not a philosopher: never was a man of books, 
a hard student; but he displayed remarkable genius. He has been too 
fond of excitement—he has lived upon it; he has been too fond of company, 
not enough alone; and has few resources within himself. Now a man who 
cannot, to some extent, depend upon himself for happiness is to my mind 
one of the unfortunate.” 

Henry Clay: “His periods glittered like polished lances in a sunny 
forest.”— Anon. 

AN ORATOR AT 22 

Clay was carried upon the shoulders of the populace because of his 
speech in Lexington, Ky., in opposition to the Alien & Sedition laws, 
when 22 years of age.— Sergenfs Life of Clay, 23. 

FAREWELL TO THE SENATE 

When he made his “Farewell Speech to the Senate,” in 1842, there 
was not a dry eye in that body.— Sergenfs Life of Clay, 210. 

DEFENSE OF JEFFERSON AND INVECTIVE AGAINST JOSIAH 

QUINCY 

“How vain and impotent is party rage directed against such a man 
(Jefferson). He is not more elevated by this lofty residence upon the 
summit of his own favorite mountain than he is lifted by the serenity 
of his mind, and the consciousness of a well-spent life above the indignant 
passions and feelings of the day. No! his own beloved Monticello is not 
less moved by the storms that beat against its sides than to this illustrious 
man by the bowlings of the whole British pack let loose from the Essex 
kennel! When the gentleman, to whom I have been compelled to allude, 
shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused ancestors, when he 
shall have been consigned to oblivion, if he live at all, shall live only in the 
treasonable annals of a certain junto, the name of Jefferson will be hailed 
with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder 
of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will 
be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs in American 
history. But, I beg the gentleman’s pardon. He has, indeed, secured 
to himself a more imperishable fame than I had supposed. I think 
it was about four years ago that he submitted to the House of Represen¬ 
tatives an initiative proposition for an impeachment of Mr. Jefferson. 


170 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


JJhe House condescended to consider it. Tlie gentleman debated it with 
his usual temper, moderation, and urbanity. The House decided upon 
it in the most solemn manner; and, although the gentleman had some¬ 
how obtained a second, the final vote stood one for and one hundred and 
seventeen against the 'proposition! The same historical page that trans¬ 
mitted to posterity the virtue and glory of Henry the Great of France 
,for their admiration and example has preserved the infamous name of 
the fanatic assassin of the excellent monarch. The same sacred pen 
that portrayed the sufferings and crucifixion of the Savior of mankind 
has recorded for universal execration the name of him who was guilty 
of betraying his God!” 

When the proposition was made to impeach Thomas Jefferson, Mr, 
Clay arose and exclaimed: “Sir, the gentleman soils the spot he 
stands upon.”— In House of Representatives, ^Sergenfs Life,’ J7. 

INTENSELY AMERICAN 

“Clay was intensely American. Few, if any, allusions are to be seen 
in his speeches or writings to ancient or modern literature, or to 
thoughts or ideas of other men. His country, its institutions, its policy, 
its interests, its destiny, form the exclusive topics of these eloquent 
harangues * * * which mark the productions of the great American 

orator.” 

— Chas. J. Franklin, of Va., in H. of R., ^Memorial Remarks,’ 
Sergent’s Life, Jf.10. 

“I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT THAN PRESIDENT” 

Said by Clay to Wm. C. Preston, in 1832, when told that his speech 
for slavery and against the reception of abolition petitions might injure 
his own and the Whig party’s prospects.— Sergent’s Life, 14 - 8 . 

DUTY OF AMERICA TO GREECE 

“Go home, if you dare, go home, if you can, to your constituents and 
tell them that you voted it down! Meet, if you dare, the appalling 
countenance of those who sent you here and tell them that you slu’ank 
from the declaration of your own sentiments; that, you cannot tell 
how, but some indefinite danger affrighted you; that the specters of 
cimetars, and crowns and crescents, gleamed before you; and that you 
suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by 
natural independence, and by humanity! I cannot bring myself to believe 
that such will be the feeling of a majority of this House.” 

THE MAN AND HIS ORATORY 

“Clay was a man of large natural ability, but he lacked the training of 
a systematic education. He learned early to appreciate his heaven-born 
endowments, and to rely upon them for success in his chosen career. 
Of sanguine temperament, quick perception, irresistible energy, and en¬ 
thusiastic disposition, he was well fitted to be a party advocate, and was 
the greatest parliamentary leader in our history. He was, however, 
inclined to ‘crack the whip’ over those of his supporters who exhibited 
a desire to hang back and question whither his impetuous lead would 
tend. He knew men well, but he had no knowledge of books. The 
gaming-table had for him allurements that he could not find in the 
library. According to the manners of his time, he drank to excess. His 
warm heart made him a multitude of friends; his impulsive action and 
positive bearing raised up enemies; yet at his death he left not an enemy 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


171 


behind him. He was withal a man of inflexible integrity. Straightened 
in pecuniary circumstances during a large part of his Congressional 
career, he nevertheless held himself aloof from all corruption. 

“Other Americans have been intellectually greater, others have been 
more painstaking, others still have been greater benefactors to their 
country; yet no man- has been loved as the people of the United States 
loved Henry Clay. * * * He was a persuasive speaker, his mag¬ 

netism was great; the impressioned utterance and the action suited to 
the word aroused the enthusiasm of the moment, and carried everything 
resistlessly before him, whether he addressed the tumultuous mass¬ 
meeting, or his cultured audience of the Senate. Yet he can hardly be 
ranked as among the half dozen great orators of the world. It is true 
his speeches in print convey no idea of the effect of their delivery, and in 
the reading, one loses the whole force of his fine physical presence, and 
fails to appreciate the strength derived from his supremely nervous 
temperament.— Jas. Ford Rhodes' History of the U. S., Vol. 1, 120-29. 

CARL SCHURZ’S ESTIMATE OF CLAY 

“Webster excelled him in breadth of knowledge, in keenness of reason¬ 
ing, in weight of argument, and in purity of diction. Webster would 
instruct, and convince, and elevate, but Clay would overcome his aud¬ 
ience. Clay was greatly the superior of Webster, as well as of all other 
contemporaries, excepting Andrew Jackson, with elements which make 
a man a leader. * * * Clay was a strong leader, but not a safe guide. 
His impulses were vehement, and his mind not well fitted for patient 
investigation. His imagination frequently ran away with his under¬ 
standing. Disliked advice which differed from his preconceived opinions. 
Was in no sense a money-maker in politics. His integrity as a public man 
remained without blemish throughout his nearly fifty years of public 
service. * * *He said: Tf any one desires to know the leading and para¬ 
mount object of my public life, the preservation of the Union will furnish 
him the key. * * He occupied the chair of Speaker of the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives for fourteen years, with short intervals, and not one of his 
decisions was ever reversed; and he stands in the traditions of the House 
as the greatest of its Speakers. * * John Q. Adams offered Clay a position 
upon the Supreme Bench of the U. S., which the latter declined, and the 
former said of him that he shed unfading honor upon the Department of 
State by the manner in which he discharged its duties.” 


EVERY MAN MUST HAVE DEFENSE 

“I have heard it observed by a very learned man that even God himself 
did not pass sentence upon Adam before he was called upon to make his 
defense. ‘Adam’, says God, ‘where art thou?’ ‘Hast thou not eaten 
of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?’ 
And the same question was put to Eve also.” 

—Sir John Fortescue, Eng. {139^-llf76) y Lord Chief Justice of 
England, in the reign of Henry VI { 1422-1 ill). Wrote, De Laudibus 
Legum. Angliae, upon which his fame rests, 1537. 



JOHN M. CLAYTON (1796-1856), Delaware 

AN INDESTRUCTIBLE UNION 

“If there be any one sentiment in my bosom more deeply seated and 
more deeply cherished than all others, it is that of love and veneration 
for che institutions which our fathers have left us, and for the country, 
fhe whole country, covered and protected by the American Constitution. 
There will be no help for me or mine when this Union shall be broken up; 
and should that melancholy period ever arrive, I shall be a wanderer 
without a home. I can take no part for one section against the other; 
to me the preservation of the Union is a matter of interest above all others, 
and if necessary I shall be true to those who sustain it to the last of my 
blood and breath.” 

Author of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, of whom John Quincy 
Adams said of his speech on the public land question in 1830: “Taken 
altogether, it was one of the most powerful and eloquent orations ever 
delivered in either of the Halls of Congress.” 

—Memoirs of Adams, Vol. 8, p. 213. 

REFUTES NULLIFICATION 

“The honorable Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) has told 
us that aU human institutions like those wliich formed them, contain 
within themselves the elements of their own destruction, and that our 
government is now exhibiting their operation. To this general phi¬ 
losophic remark I should not have objected but for its application. All 
the works of man are destined to decay; but while the American people 
shall remain true to themselves, their government cannot be destroyed, 
for it contains within itself endless, and ever renascent energies which 
must bring it out in triumph, and with Antaean vigor in despite of every 
effort to overthrow it. From foreign force it has nothing to fear; it 
dreads nothing now from any section of this Union which shall seek to 
prevent by foreign intervention the just operation of our laws. Yes 
sir, foreign alliance sought by any member of this confederacy for the 
pmpose of making war on us, would be the means under Heaven of 
immediately rallying every patriot of every political party under the 
broad banner of the Republic. 

“Popular virtue is the only safe basis of popular government. This 
is the ‘fountain from which our current runs or bears no life;’ and I 
concede that the moral blow to the liberties of this country may at last 
be struck by the hand of one who has been indebted to it for existence. 
The shaft which shall stretch the American Eagle, bleeding and lifeless 
in the dust, must be feathered from his own bright pinions, and bitter 
will be the hand of him who shall loose that fatal arrow from the string. 

“Remember him the villain, righteous Heaven, in thy great day of 
vengeance! Blast the traitor, and his pernicious counsels, who, for wealth, 
for powers, the pride of greatness or revenge, would plunge his native 
land in civil war’.” 

—John M. Clayton's Reply to Senator John Tyler of Virginia on 

^Nullification', 1833. 


LAW— Lord Clarendon 

“The law is the standard and guardian of our liberty; it circumscribes 
and defends it; but to imagine liberty without law, is to imagine every 
man with his sword in his hand to destroy him who is weaker than 
himself.” 



HENRY L. CLINTON, New York 

ARRAIGNMENT OF SIMMS 

“What a picture of woe! The family altar in ruins! The seducer 
has wrapped the domestic temple in the flames of everlasting infamy! 
Simms, not content with having done his worst to destroy the soul of 
his victim, has assassinated her memory! He not only plucked from the 
diadem of her pure character the priceless jewel, virtue, but now that 
she is dead, and her mother is in eternity, a mother who, if living, with 
God’s truth would brand on his forehead, in letters of glowing fire, 
the words, ‘Liar, Defiler of the Ashes of the Dead!’ yes, now that the voice 
alike of mother and daughter is hushed in the cold and silent grave, 
he revels in the fond recollection of the triumphs of his lechery, and, 
in effect, proclaims his victim a willing wanton.” 

—Henry L. Clinton, in Defense of Dr. E. M. Brown of N. Y. for 
the Murder of Miss Clementina Anderson, the 20 yr. old daughter 
of Jas. Anderson. Mr. Clinton contended that Simms, 26 yrs. of 
age, who had been a suitor of two years, was the murderer. Brown 
was convicted of manslaughter. 

Says Henry L. Clinton: “Mr. Graham was a profound and thoroughly 
read lawyer. He was especially skillful and discreet in the conduct of 
trials. He wrote when a student of law ‘Graham’s Practice,’ which he 
sold to Gould, Banks & Co. for $500, upon which they netted $30,000.” 


BOLINGBROKE ON LAWYERS 

“I might instance in other professions the obligations men lie under of 
applying to certain parts of history; and I can hardly forbear doing it in 
that of the law, in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, 
in its abuse and debasement the most pernicious. A lawyer now is 
nothing more (I speak of ninety-nine in a hundred at least), to use some 
of Tully’s words, ^Nisi laegulius quidam cautus, et acutus praeco actionum 
cantor formularum, auceps syllaharum.^ But there have been lawyers that 
were orators, philosophers, historians. There have been Bacons and 
Clarendons. There will be none such any more till, in some better age, 
true ambition or the love of fame prevails over avarice, and till men find 
leisure and encouragement to prepare themselves for the exercise of this 
profession by climbing up to the vantage ground—so my Lord Bacon calls 
it—of science, instead of grovelling all their lives below in a mean but 
gainful application to all the little arts of chicane. Till this happens, the 
profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked among the learned 
professions; and whenever it happens, one of the vantage grounds to which 
men must climb is metaphysical, and the other historical, knowledge. They 
must pry into the secret recesses of the human heart and become well 
acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the 
abstract reason of all laws; and they must trace the laws of particular 
states, especially of their own, from the first rough sketches to the more 
perfect draughts, from the first causes or occasions that produced them, 
through all the effects, good and bad, that they produced.” 

—From the '■Study of History.^ 


LAW— Sir Matthew Hale 

“All before Richard I. is before time of memory; and what is since is, 
in a legal sense, within the time of memory.” 




BOURKE COCKRAN (1854- ), New York 


ANTAGONISM MAKES ORATOR 

“I believe a man, to make a great speech, should be antagonized, stung, 
as it were, to effort. Ordinary speech-making is vapid and leads to nothing. 
At any rate it bores me. To talk for the sake of talking, just to make 
mere pleasantries, that is not oratory.” 

—Bourke Cochran, at Tammany Hall, New York City, 1892. 

CONFIDENCE AND COMMERCE 

“Confidence is to Commerce what the .atmosphere is to the human 
body. Impair the one and trade is paralyzed; curb the other and human 
existence is ended.” 

—From speech at Auditorium, Chicago, III., Sep. 12, 1896. 
OUR REPUBLIC 

“We will never concede that this republic of ours is anything but 
a glorious beacon kindled by patriot hands in the western sky to show 
the sons of men everywhere the pathway to liberty, to order and pros¬ 
perity. We will never concede as the populists pretend, that it is but 
a beacon kindled by the hands of cupidity upon the rocks of destruction, 
disorder and dishonor. We will never believe that the record of the 
American republic obscures the horizon of hope to the children of men. 
We will never concede that those stars in that flag are tear drops, rained 
from the eye of human despair. We will always insist that like the 
stars of heaven, they are glittering proofs of God’s abundant, over¬ 
flowing mercy to men. We believe that as long as civilization lasts this 
will continue to lead mankind in the pathway of honest dealing and wise 
legislation. We believe that wherever in the future men may talk of 
the country that is greatest of the people that are grandest, of the nation 
that is most prosperous, of the men that are the bravest, and of the 
women that are the purest, we will know that ours is the country of which 
they speak, we will know ‘My Country ’tis of Thee, Sweet Land of 
Liberty.’ ”— From same Speech, Chicago, Sep. 12, 1896. 

VICE AND FOLLY 

“I have always felt that there is nothing original, either in vice or 
folly” 

In speaking of Bryan’s assertion that the American people do not want 
to be dominated by the money power of England, which tried a debased 
currency, clipped money, before 1696, until she called in all inferior 
money by giving full weight for debased money, at the suggestion 
of her committee to remedy the difficulty, under the advice of Sir Isaac 
Newton and John Locke.— From Chicago Speech, Sep. 12, 1896. 


YNm—Hooker 

“Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven 
and earth do her homage,—the very least as feeling her care. 



ALEXANDER COCKBURN (1802-1880), England 

DEFENDING A BAD CAUSE 

“Much as I admire the great ability of Monsieur Berryer, to my mind 
his crowning virtue, as it ought to be of every advocate, as he has through¬ 
out his career conducted his cases with untarnished honor. The arms 
which an advocate wields he ought to use as a warrior, and not as an 
assassin. He ought to uphold the interests of his clients per fas, and not 
per nefas. He ought to know how to reconcile the interests of his clients 
with the eternal principles of truth and justice.” 

BULL-DOZING CROSS-EXAMINATIONS 

“I deeply deplore that members of the Bar so frequently unneces¬ 
sarily put questions affecting the private life of witnesses, which are 
only justifiable when they challenge the credibility of witnesses. I 
have watched closely the administration of justice in France, Germany, 
Holland, Belgium, Italy, and a little in Spain, as well as in the United 
States, in Canada, and in Ireland, and in no place have I seen witnesses 
so badgered, browbeaten, and in every way so brutally maltreated as in 
England. The waj^ in which we treat our witnesses is a national disgrace 
and a serious obstacle, instead of aiding the ends of justice. In England, 
the most honorable and conscientious men loathe the witness-box. 
Men and women of all ranks shrink from subjecting themselves to the 
wanton insult and bullying misnamed cross-examination in our English 
courts. Watch the tremor that passes the frames of many persons as 
they enter the witness-box. I remember to have seen so distingusihed 
a man as the late Sir Benjamin Brodie shiver as he entered the witness- 
box. I dare say his apprehension amounted to exquisite torture. Witnesses 
are just as necessary for the administration of justice as judges and 
juries and are entitled to be treated with the same consideration, and 
their affairs and private lives ought to be held as sacred from the gaze 
of the public as those of the judges and the jurymen. I venture to think 
that it is the duty of the judge to allow no questions to be put to a witness 
unless such as are clearly pertinent to the issue before the Court, except 
where the credibility of the witness is deliberately challenged by counsel 
and that the credibility of a witness should not be wantonly challenged 
on slight grounds.”— From the Irish Law Times, 1874-. 

Cockburn studied at Cambridge, Eng., was called to the bar in 1829, 
soon became distinguished as a pleader before parliamentary committees. 
In 1847 he became member of parliament from Southampton, in the 
Liberal interest, became Solicitor-General and was knighted, 1850; was 
made chief justice of the common pleas, 1856; Lord Chief Justice, 1859. 
He was prosecutor in the Palmer case; and among the many famous trials 
over which he presided were the Wainwright and Tichborne cases; rep¬ 
resented Britain in the Alabama aa^se.—Author. 

THE^PALMER PROSECUTION 

“In 1856, William Palmer, nominally a surgeon, but really a racing 
and betting blacMeg, of Staffordshire was brought to trial in the Central 
Criminal Court for poisoning his friend and patient, John Parsons Cook, 
with strychina. That deadly alkaloid was then practically unknown in 
England, and the medical profession sharply divided both as to the symp¬ 
toms which accompany, and the appearances which follow, its adminis- 


176 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


tration. Cockburn was attorney-general, and therefore responsible for 
the prosecution. He spent the greater part of his time in studying the 
chemistry of strychina in the laboratory of Dr. Swaine Taylor, whose 
treatise on Medical Jurisprudence is a standard in all countries. The 
prisoner was defended by Sergeant Shee, the foremost criminal lawyer 
of his day, and Mr. Grove, Q. C., an eminent man of science, and a 
Privy Councillor, in 1891, aided by an army of medical experts. A deter¬ 
mined and most ingenious effort was made to show that tetanus produced 
by strychina, traumatic tetanus, idiopathic, or constitutional tetanus, 
epilepsy, and general convulsions could not be distinguished with sufficient 
clearness to warrant the jury in finding a verdict against the prisoner; 
but Cockburn’s victory was complete. His opening speech ‘will live 
forever,’ in legal literature; he completely destroyed in cross-examination 
the expert evidence of the defense, and secured the conviction of the 
prisoner. When the jury returned a verdict of ‘guilty,’ the convict 
threw over the dock-rail to his sohcitor a scrap of paper on which he had 
written, in the language of the turf, ‘the riding has done it.’ ” 

—3 Green Bag, S80. 

LAWYER, LEGISLATOR, JUDGE 

“Alexander Cockburn was one of the few who in our time have won 
fame alike at the bar, in the House of Commons, and on the bench. 
But he ought to have won fame also as a sayer of good things, and to 
win such fame he only needed a faithful chronicler.” 

—2 Justin McCarthy's Reminiscences, 196. 

A GREAT ADVOCATE AND A GREAT LAWYER 

“At the bar Cockburn was merely a great advocate; but when he had 
ascended the bench, he soon made himself a great lawyer and a great 
judge. His magnificent gift of exposition, matured by practice, reached 
a far higher development in the great Matlock will case (1870) than even 
in the prosecution of Palmer. But it is not solely nor chiefly for these 
great judicial efforts that Lord Cockburn will be remembered. The 
modern law of newspaper libel is practically his creation, and no lawyer 
will ever speak without respect of the judge who pronounced the decision 
in Banks v. GoodfeUow.”— 3 Green Bag, 131. 

A TYPICAL ENGLISHMAN 

“Lord Cockburn was, in his faults and in his virtues, a typical English¬ 
man. In his boisterous life, his intellectual strength, and his almost 
feudal chivalry he resembled one of our old Norman kings. * * * 

Lord Cockburn was every inch an advocate; his forensic career had its 
own failures, of course, but these were relieved by triumphs which 
only genius of a high order could have accomplished. His reply in the 
Palmer case is superior to anything that can be found in the published 
speeches of Erskine; and his cross-examination for the defense of the 
same cause celebre could hardly be surpassed.”— 3 Green Bag, 130. 


WIRT ON READING 

“Get a habit, a passion for reading; not fiying from book to book, with 
the squeamish caprice of a literary epicure; but read systematically, 
closely, thoughtfully, analyzing every subject as you go along, and 
laying it up carefully and safely in your memory. It is only by this 
mode that your information will be at the same time extensive, accurate, 
and useful.” 



SIR EDWARD COKE (1549-1634), England 

THE SUBJECT SHOULD CONSENT TO TAX 

“The lord may tax his villien (tenant), high or low; but it is against 
the franchises of the land for freemen to be taxed but by their consent 
in parliament.” 

RESTRAINT IS IMPRISONMENT 

“No restraint be it ever so little, but is imprisonment.” 

SYLLABLES RULE WORLD 

“Syllables govern the world.” 

JOSTLING WITH THE LAW 

“No subject, though ever so powerful or subtle, ever confronted or 
jostled with the law of England, but the same law in the end infallibly 
broke his neck.” 

READING 

“A cursory and tumultory reading doth ever make a confused memory, 
a troubled utterance, and an uncertain judgment.”— 6th Report (Preface). 

COKE’S LAST WORDS 

His last words: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” 

THANKED GOD FOR THREE THINGS 

“I thank God for three things: That I never gave my body to physic, 
my heart to cruelty, nor my hand to corruption; and I commend myself 
for three things: Obtaining so fair a fortune with my first wife, my 
successful study of the law, and the independent manner in which I 
obtained all my public employments, nec prece, nec pretio, without either 
prayers or pence.” 

READING WITHOUT HEARING 

“Reading without hearing is dark and irksome; hearing without reading 
is slippery and uncertain; neither of them yield seasonable fruit without 
conference.” 

THE LAW IS LIKE A DEEP WELL 

“Knowledge of the law is like a deep well, out of which each man 
draweth according to the strength of his understanding.” 

BRITISH CONSTITUTION 

“The wisdom of all the wise men in the world, if they had all met 
together, could not have equaled the British Constitution.” 

LITTLETON’S TENURES 

“The most perfect and absolute work that ever was written in any 
known science.” 


178 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE FIRST LAW-GIVER 

“Moses was the first Reporter.” 

“A man’s house is his castle.”— 3rd Institute. 

HIS METHOD OF LEGAL STUDY 

“Six hours in sleep, in law’s grave study six, 

Four spent in prayer, the rest on nature fix.” 

— Translation of Lines, quoted hy Coke. 

. FREEDOM OF TRADE 

“Freedom of trade is the life of trade, and all monopolies and restric¬ 
tions of trade do overthrow trade.”— Roscoe's Life of Coke, 29. 

REASON AND LAW 

“Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing 
but reason. * * * The law is the perfection of reason.”— 1st Institute. 

JURISPRUDENCE 

“The gladsome light of jurisprudence.”— 1st Institute. 

CORPORATIONS 

“They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor 
excommunicated, for they have no souls.” 

— Case of Suttords Hospital, 10 Rep., 32, 

MAGNA CHARTA 

“Magna Charta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.” 

— Debate in the Commons, May 17, 1628. 

CLEAN CLOTHES 

“The cleanliness of a man’s clothes ought to put him in mind of keep¬ 
ing all clean within.” 

THE COMMON LAW 

“If I am asked a question of common law, I should be ashamed if I 
could not immediately answer it, but if I am asked a question of statute 
law, I should be ashamed to answer it without referring to the statute 
book.” 

WEALTHY 

Coke was extremely avaricious, and left an enormous fortune; so great 
that it excited the alarm of the crown. 

HARD WORKER 

“He was the most methodical and hard working man that ever lived; 
slept only six hours, and from three in the morning till nine he read or 
took notes of the cases tried in Westminster Hall, with as little inter¬ 
ruption as possible.” 

— This was during his student days.—British Biography, article, 

Coke, 120. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


179 


ABUSE OF RALEIGH 

!‘Sir Edward Coke, a man of prodigious ability and acquirement, 
but still essentially commonplace in bis intellect and prejudices, was 
once goaded by rage and hatred into an imagination in which his whole 
massive nature seemed to emit itself in a Titanic stutter of passion. 
We refer, of course, to his calling Sir Walter Raleigh a ‘spider of hell’— 
an image in which loathing became executive, and palpably smit its 
object on the cheek. * * * The image may be a small matter in itself, 
becomes tremendous when we see the whole roused might of Coke glare 
terribly through it.”— Whipple's ^Literature and Life,' 24^1. 

COKE AND BACON COMPARED 

“Sir Edward Coke and Francis Bacon were by far the most extraor¬ 
dinary men of their age. England had never before seen two such legal 
rivals in her courts, and time has not produced any two lawyers who can 
be compared to these great opponents in her Augustean age. Bacon had 
the greater genius. Coke the most industry and application; the first had 
a mind the most comprehensive and capable of the highest flights; the 
last had the greater power of application and of exclusive attention. 
The mind of the one was utterly incapable of producing the ‘Novum Or- 
ganum’ as the other was to luxuriate among the dry immortal sections 
of the ‘Commentaries of Littleton.’ * * * 

“Bacon became the head of the Court of Equity, Coke held the high¬ 
est common law office in the gift of the Crown. Both were charged with 
malversation in the administration of their official duties, one with 
unsoundness of his law, the other with the badness of his equity. The 
King removed his Chief Justice, the parliament disqualified the Chan¬ 
cellor. Both died in disgrace, though they had partially recovered the 
smiles of royalty. * * * They were both great men, both had 

ther weak points, and are both entitled to the grateful plaudits of pos¬ 
terity.”^— -2 Johnson's Life of Coke, 70. 

SELDEN AND COKE COMPARED 

“John Selden was the most learned of Sir Edward Coke’s contempo¬ 
raries; born when the latter was 34 years of age, though profoundly 
learned, never dwelt upon any subject, bub he exhausted all the learning 
that could be brought to bear upon the question. Coke loved decision of 
character, and early action upon such decision. Both were mentally and 
personally industrious. Selden had a great love of ease, and sometimes 
indulged idleness and timidity at the expense of his character as a 
patriot.”— 2 Johnson's Life of Coke, 183-4- 

COKE ON LITTLETON’S TENURES 

“It is the work of absolute perfection in its kind, and as free from errors 
as any book I have known to be written of any human learning.” 

—2 Johnson's Life,' 456. 

COKE’S INSTITUTES 

“This work is in 4 volumes, the first only being published during his 
life, when in his 82nd year. They are in four parts: 

1st. Contained Comments upon ‘Littleton’s Tenures,’ the various 
tenures, by which in common law, land is held; 

2nd. Upon Magna Charta, Westminster 1, and other old statutes; 

3rd. Criminal Causes, and Pleas of the Crown; 

4th. The Jurisdiction of the Courts. 

His ‘Commentaries upon Littleton’ is an immense repository of every- 


180 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


thing that is most interesting or useful in the legal learning of ancient 
times. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, Institutes were published after his death.” 

—2 Johnson's Life of Coke, ^44-58. 

HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE 

Coke, who is said to have weighed at birth 14 pounds, was preposses¬ 
sing in appearance, of regular features and engaging expression, of 
vigorous and well-proportioned frame, grave and dignified air and manner, 
of temperate, laborious, and exact habits; neat in his dress, and studious 
of the cleanliness of his person. Retired at 9 o’clock, and rose at 3 in 
the morning. He was proud in the extreme, imperious and overbearing. 
This pride was one great actuating principle which followed him through 
life, was distinguished in his two marriages, in his pleadings, in his deci¬ 
sions as a judge, in his contests with Bacon, in his intrigues in court, in 
the marriages of his children, and even in his speeches in parliament. 

HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 

Coke married when 31 Bridget Paston, 18 years of age, from whom 
he received, and at her father’s death $150,000. He lived very happily 
with her, whom he married in 1582, and by whom he had ten children. 
She died in 1598, when he married Elizabeth Hatton, the beautiful 
young daughter and wealthy widow of Sir William Hatton, the daughter 
of Thos. Cecil, first Earl of Exeter, He was then 48, and rising in his 
profession, and was the first law officer of the Crown. Was opposed 
by his illustrious rival Francis Bacon. She was very young, barely of 
age, and one of the court beauties,—gay proud, high-spirited and clever. 
Their tastes were dissimilar;- she an admired courtier, delighting in fes¬ 
tivals, plays, court masques, and every variety of revelry; he a grave, 
elderly lawyer, and gave, it appears, but few large entertainments, took 
no pleasure in festivities, studied hard and unceasingly, went to bed 
with the sun, and rose at 3 o’clock in the morning. Was busy in the 
courts, and she enjoying dissipation, and ashamed of her husband. 

HIS INCOME 

During his attorney-generalship. Coke’s income, including his official 
fees (which were but $405) was about $35,000 annually—a very large 
sum for those times. 

HAD POOR OPINION OF BACON 

“Coke had a poor opinion of Bacon’s knowledge of law, and an equally 
mean opinion of his philosophy, of which last branch of knowledge, 
however, he was totally unqualified to be a judge.” 

— Johnson's Life of Coke, 222. 

HELD BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE IN CONTEMPT 

He looked upon Jonson and Shakespeare as “vagrants,” so much did 
he despise general literature. 

UNEQUALED IN INFORMATION 

“As a lawyer Coke has, perhaps, never been equaled in the copious 
extent and variety of his information. As an antiquarian lawyer, he 
was not deeply learned, and was surpassed by Selden, and perhaps by 
Hale. Yet even with these defects he stood the acknowledged head of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


1§1 


his profession, at a period fruitful in eminent men, and when the am¬ 
bition of Bacon led him to devote his high genius to the same pursuits.” 

— Roscoe’s ^Eminent Lawyers,’ Jf.0. 

COKE’S REPORTS 

“Coke’s Reports, in 13 volumes, (1601-1658), of which 11 volumes 
were published during his life, constitute a mass of legal information 
to which no lawyer is a stranger. They comprehend an immense mass of 
decisions in wliich the ablest lawyers pleadfed, the greatest judges pre¬ 
sided, and which the greatest lawyer of his age reported, with an industry, 
unwearied, and unfailing accuracy. Many successors have excelled him in 
fluency of language, in elegance of expression, but none have rivalled 
him in the immense legal knowledge with which his reports abound. 
* * * In more than two centuries which had intervened since Edward 
III had caused the publication of his official reports of cases argued 
and determined in the Courts at Westminster, few law reporters of any 
kind had appeared. The first reporters were men learned in the law, 
—the results of their labors are in 11 volumes—known as the Year 
Books, extending through nearly 2 centuries, beginning in the 1st year 
of Edward I, and concluded in the 12th year of Henry VIII.” 

—2 Johnson’s Life of Coke, 4-27-9. 

COKE’S CONTEMPORARIES 

Plowden Bacon (who graduated as did Coke at Cambridge, died 
$110,000 in debt, Egerton (Lord Ellesmere), Cooke, Yelverton, Hobart, 
Tanfield, were great lawyers—^the ablest Britain has produced. Shakes¬ 
peare was fourteen years Coke’s senior. Coke long outlived Beaumont 
and Fletcher, Spencer, of the ‘Fairy Queen’ fame, Camden Burleigh, 
Robert Cecil, and Ben Jonson survived him three years. Harvey, the 
discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was for sixty-five years his 
contemporary— 2 Johnson’s Life of Coke, 434- 

SIR FRANCES WINDEBANK STOLE HIS PAPERS 

Sir Frances Windebank came to Coke’s house at Stoke Pogis, when on 
his death bed, in his 83rd year, in virtue of an order from the Privy 
Council in search of certain seditious papers—at least this was the pre¬ 
tense. He seized in his search of these papers and carried away Coke’s 
will, his Life of Judge Littleton, in his own hand writing, his Commentary 
on that judge’s Book of Tenures, and upon Magna Charta, Pleas of the 
Crown, Jurisdiction of Courts, besides 51 other manuscripts. 70 years 
afterwards Roger Coke, his own son, upon motion, requested the King, 
working through the House of Commons, to restore these valuable papers 
to his family. His will was never recovered, but the remainder were in 
consequence of this address principally returned— 2 Johnson’ Life, 320. 


RELIGION 

Lord Chatham: “If you are not right toward God, you can never 
be so toward man; and that is forever true; whether wits and rakes 
allow it or not.”— To his nephew. 

D. Webster; “Political and professional fame cannot last forever, 
but "a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance 
for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessity, an indispensable ele¬ 
ment. 



JOHN DUKE COLERIDGE (1821-1894), England 


AMERICAN WRITERS 

“You know—forgive my vanity if I say I know, too—that you bred 
Benjamin Franklin, and Daniel Webster, and Joseph Story, and Theo¬ 
dore Parker: Daniel Webster, whose hand I was privileged as a boy at 
Eton to press, when he was in England as your representative, and 
whose eloquence I have hurnbly studied ever since; Story, a household 
word with every English lawyer; Parker, perhaps one of your highest and 
greatest souls. (Applause.) Hawthorne, if you will forgive me the 
expression of a foreigner, is, perhaps, taken altogether, almost your 
foremost man of letters (applause); Longfellow, the delight and darling of 
two hemispheres; Holmes, the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (applause); 
the autocrat, if he can chose, of every dinner table, too—but there I 
am told he is content to play the part of a constitutional sovereign. 
Emerson, as broad and as strong as ope of your rivers, and as pure; 
Lowell, I am proud to say, my own honest friend (applause), your repre¬ 
sentative at this moment in my own country. Like Garrick in Joshua 
Reynold’s picture, he excels in either tragedy or comedy, and is delight¬ 
ful whether as Hosea Bigelow or as James Russell Lowell, skilled with 
equal genius to move the hearts of his hearers whether to smiles or tears. 
And Howells, the last of your American invaders who have taken England 
by storm. (Applause.) These are your glories, these are the men who make 
your history. These are the men, forgive me for saying, of whom you 
ought to be proud, if you are not heartily proud. (Applause.) 

—At a banquet, given by the City of Boston, at the Parker House, 
Sept. 8, 1883. 

EXTINGUISHING A LIFE 

“The life of the prisoner is in your hands, gentlemen.” (Just then 
the lights went out.) “You can extinguish it as easily as that candle 
was extinguished but a moment ago; but it is not in your power to restore 
that life, once taken, as that light has been restored!” 

—Extract from speech in defence of a murderer. 

DISTINGUISHED 

No English judge has attained such distinction at once in letters, 
politics and law. “Nature,” said an adverse critic, “intended him 
for a bishop, but accident made him a judge.” 

IN FAVOR OF CODE PLEADING 

“You have lately procured, may I say most wisely, a great national park, 
into which the bounties and glories of nature, and strange and eccentric 
forms which natural objects sometimes assume, may be preserved for¬ 
ever for the instruction and delight of the citizens of this great republic. 
Could it not be arranged that, with the sanction of the State, some 
corner in that one park should be preserved as a Idnd of pleading park, 
into which the glories of the negative pregnant, abseque hoc, replication 
de injuria, rebutter and sir-rebutter, and all the other weird and fanciful 
creations of the pleader’s brain, might be preserved for future ages, 
to gratify the respectful curiosity of your descendants, and that our 
good old English judges, if ever they revisit the glimpses of the moon, 
might have some place where their weary souls might have rest, some 
place where they might still find the form preferred to the substance, 
the statement the thing stated?” 

—Extract from Speech delivered before the N. Y. Bar Ass^n, 


ROSCOE CONKLING (1829-1888), New York 

CONKLING ON GEO. W. CURTIS 

“Who are these men, who, in newspapers and elsewhere, are cracking 
the whip over Republicans and playing school-masters to the Republican 
party and its conscience and convictions. Some of them are man-milliners, 
and the dilitantes and carpet knights of politics; men whose efforts 
have been expended in denouncing honest people, who in storm and sun, 
and war and peace, have clung to the Republican flag and defended it 
against those who tried to trail it in the dust. 

“Some of them are men who, when they could work themselves into 
conventions, have attempted to belittle and befoul Republican adminis- 
strations and to parade their own thin veneering of purity. Some of 
them have sought nominations at the hands of Democrats, and some, 
with the zeal of neophites and the bitterness of apostates, have done 
more than self-respecting Democrats would do to slander their govern¬ 
ment and countrymen. Some of these worthies masquerade as reformers; 
their vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people. They 
forget that parties are not built up by deportment or by ladies’ maga¬ 
zines or gush. Their stock in trade is rancid self-rightousness. When 
Dr. Johnson deflned partiotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was 
conscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word 
‘Reform’.”— Roscoe Conkling. 

He refused an Associate Justiceship on the United States Supreme 
Bench, from President Arthur, in 1882, and was tendered the Chief 
Justiceship, in 1873, by President Grant, but declined both, as he did 
a Ministership to England, and the post of Secretary of State. His 
text-books were the Bible, Shakespeare, and the prose writings of Ma¬ 
caulay, Burke, Pitt, Fox and Erskine. “In affluent and exuberant dic¬ 
tion,” says Jas. G. Blaine, “Mr. Conkling was never surpassed in either 
branch of Congress, unless perhaps, by Rufus Choate.” And yet, after 
Blaine’s scathing arraignment of Conkling in the H. of R., their speaking 
acquaintance ceased, and when Conkling was asked to campaign for 
Blaine for the Presidency, replied; “No, thanks, I never engaged in 
the criminal practice, and do not care to begin now.” 

NEW YORK, WHEN EMANCIPATION WAS PROCLAIMED 

“Truth and common sense were hooted and buffeted, and unkennelled 
cowardice and ignorance barked in hideous chorus. Wantonness and 
infatuation ruled the hour. Drugged with error, dizzy vath fear and 
maddened with passion, men and women were led from meetings to mobs; 
from a dance of faction to death. In the City of New York, duped and 
imbruted thousands rioted in blood; the blade, the bullet and the cup 
did each its work, and the torch sent up from the Christian soil of that 
imperial city the smoke of a burning orphan asylum, to tell heaven of 
the inhuman bigotry, the horrible barbarity of man. Emancipation 
prevailed, the uplifted banners of opposition and revolt went down, and 
the nation’s flag waved safe conduct to black and white alike, from Mex¬ 
ico to British America.” 

—Roscoe Conkling—From speech in Senate on the repeal of a reso¬ 
lution of the Legislature of N. Y. ratifying the 15th Amendment, Feb. 
22,1870. 

DEATH 

“Death is nature’s supreme abhorrence. The dark valley, with its 
weird and solemn shadows, illumined by the rays of Christianity, is still 


184 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the ground which man shudders to approach. The grim portals and the 
narrow house seem in the laj^e of centuries to have gained rather than 
lost in impressive and foreboding horror.” 

—Roscoe Conkling,—remarks in Senate, upon the death of Oliver P. 
Morton, Jan. 17, 1878. 

Truth.: “Truth is a torch; the more you shake it the brighter it burns.” 

Abraham Lincoln: “Lincoln was one of those who darken nations 
when they die.”— Roscoe Conkling. 

Thomas B. Macaulay: “Macaulay’s Essays are ‘freighted with the 
spoils of all ages’.”— Roscoe Conkling. 

DRUNKEN WITNESS 

“I can see him now, his mouth stretching over the wide desolation 
of his meaningless face,—a fountain of falsehood and a sepulcher of rum.” 
—In Surrogate Court, N. Y. C. 

PREJUDICE AND SUPERSTITION 

“Prejudice and superstition are the children of ignorance. He who 
harbors prejudice unwittingly is only ignorant, but he who entertains 
prejudice knowingly, is also corrupt.” 

—In the Oleomargerine case,—In Re Bresnehan, 75 Fed. Rep. 
tried at Kansas City, Mo., before Miller, McCrary and Krekel, JJ. 

THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

The framers of this great provision builded better than they knew.” 
—In U. S. Supreme Court. 

GENERAL U. S. GRANT 

“You ask me what State he comes from? My answer shall be, he hails 
from Appomattox and its famous apple tree.” 

— Conkling, in nominating Gen. Grant for the 3rd time as President 
in 1880. 

COMPLIMENT TO THURMAN 

“Mr. President, when I turn to the Senator from Ohio, I beg to assure 
him that I turn to him as the Mussulman turns toward Mecca; I turn to 
him as I would turn to the common law of England—the world’s most 
copious fount of jurisprudence.” 

— While defending Gen'l Sherdian in U. S. Senate, Jan. 28, 1875. 

REPLY TO WM. PINKNEY WHITE 

“Mr. President, not as the last rose of summer, but as the rose of last 
summer, as the last leaf upon the tree, I beg to offer to the distinguished 
Senator from Maryland—and I trust that he will receive them—my 
sincere condolences. As was said of Napoleon at Helena, he is wrapped 
in the solitude of his own originality. He is the last of the barons, the 
last of the Mohicans, the last of that long list of statesmen who once 
belonged to the late Democratic party, and I beg to uncover in the 
presence of the pale memory of such a thing.” — U. S. Senate, Feb. 3, 1881. 


RUSSELL H. CON WELL (1843- ), Pennsylvania 

ADVICE ABOUT STARTING IN BUSINESS 


“The moment a young man or woman gets more money than he 
or she has gained by practical experience, that moment he or she has got¬ 
ten a curSe. It is no help to a young man or woman to inherit money. It 
is no help to your children to leave them money, but if you leave them 
education, if you leave them Christian and noble character, if you leave 
them a wide circle of friends, if you leave them an honorable name, 
it is far better than that they should have money at all. Oh, young man, 
if you have inherited money, don’t regard it as a help. It will curse you 
through your years, and deprive you of the very best things of human life. 
There is no class of people to be pitied so much as the inexperienced sons 
and daughters of the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man’s son. 
He can never know the best things in life. One of the best things in our 
life is when a young man has earned his own living, and when he becomes 
engaged to some lovely young woman, and m£lkes up his mind to have 
a home of his own. Then with the same love comes also that divine 
inspiration toward better things, and he begins to save his money. He 
begins to leave olf his bad habits and put money in the bank. When he 
has a few hundred dollars he goes out in the suburbs to look for a home. 
He goes to the savings-bank, perhaps, for half of the value, and then goes 
for his wife, and when he takes his bride over the threshold of that door 
for the first time he says in words of eloquence my voice can never touch: 
‘I have earned this home myself. It is all mine, and I divide with thee.’ 
That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever know.” 

Now 79, began as a lawyer. The above is taken from his lecture, 
‘Acres of Diamonds,’ which he had delivered in 1915, 5,124 times during 
his 50 years on the lecture platform, at an average of $150 per lecture,— 
thus making over $1,000,000,—all given to young men to carry them 
through college, after his expenses are paid. 


DAVID DUDLEY FIELD NOT A CHEAP LAWYER 

On one occasion Field, whose yearly income was $100,000, was employed 
by a great corporation to write an opinion on a matter of vital moment to 
its interest. He bestowed several days upon it, and charged $5,000. The 
corporate officers were astounded. Mr. Field said: “Why did you come to 
me ? You know that I am not a cheap lawyer. You knew that you could get 
an opinion to the same effect for a fifth of the money, from any one of 
half a dozen lawyers—naming them—which would have commanded 
respect, but for some reason you came to me. Now I think you came to 
me because you believed my opinion would be more infiuential in effecting 
the result which you desired, and I believe it has been accomplished, 
and that my opinion contributed largely toward it. Am I not right?” 
The officers could not gainsay the allegations. “Very well then, gentlemen, 
you have been benefited to a vast amount through my opinion, and you 
must pay me my charge, which, all things considered, is a very small 
one.” They paid, and they kept on paying his charges. 

—Irving Browne in '^The Lawyers^ Easy Chair." May, 1894. 



THOMAS M. COOLEY (1824-1898), Michigan 

THE BEGINNING OP U. S. HISTORY 

“With the triumph of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham, it has been 
said, began the history of the United States. Voltaire, in his retire¬ 
ment at Ferney, rejoiced at the fall of Quebec, and the immediate sur¬ 
render of Canada, and celebrated it by a banquet as the precursor of 
American enfranchisement. But this great event meant more than 
American enfranchisement; it meant the overtlirow of the despotic 
principles in America, and the surrender of the continent, with all its 
immense possibilities, to the growing and expanding ideas of English 
liberty. American enfranchisement from British rule was an event of 
first importance, but its value to the world would have been infinitely 
lessened had it not been grounded on the assertion and maintenance of 
rights assured to the subject of English law. For many centuries now the 
germs of free institutions have been planted in England, nurtured by 
the robust thought and ‘defended by the vigorous arms of its people; 
and when from time to time despotism trampled in the dust the incipient 
attempts of other nations to win recognition of rights or to gain relief 
from intolerable burdens, the sea-girt island, in maintaining her inde¬ 
pendence, preserved her liberties also, and the slow but certain develop¬ 
ment of Lee institutions went on unchecked. The two opposing prin¬ 
ciples in government had now grappled in a final struggle for mastery in 
America, and when despotism fell, a Britain, no longer needing the 
protection of the four seas, but stepping boldly out to occupy a continent 
as master, began immediately to give prophecy of that vast confederacy 
of commonwealths which was successively to become the rebellious child, 
the hated rival, and at last the chief glory of the island parent, and the 
precursor of other confederacies of commonwealths which should speedily • 
give the English tongue and to English liberty an undisputed leadership 
on both continents.”— American Commonwealths, Michigan, written hy 
Judge Cooley, in 1885. 

THE RIGHT OF A CITY TO CONTROL ITS EXPENDITURES 

“Whoever insists upon the right of the State to interfere and control 
by compulsory legislation, the action of the local constituency, in matters 
exclusively of local concern, should be prepared to defend a like inter¬ 
ference in the action of private corporations and of National persons. 
It is as easy to justify on principle, a law which permits the use of the 
community to dictate to an individual what he shall eat, what he shall 
drink, and what he shall wear, as to show any constitutional basis for 
one under which the people of other parts of the State through their 
representatives dictate to the City of Detroit what fountains shall be 
erected at its expense for the use of its citizens, or at what cost it shall 
purchase, and how it shall improve and embellish a park or boulevard for 
the recreation and enjoyment of its citizens.” 

—Decision of Thos. M. Cooley, in Park Commissioner v. Common 
Council of Detroit, 28 Mich., 228—which asserts the right of local 
self-government against a legislative attempt to compel a municipal 
appropriation for the purchase of a public park. 

“In the course of 20 years of judicial life, it has fallen to Judge Cooley 
to prounce judgment of the court in very many cases of first importance, 
among which may be instanced, as the most striking and conspicuous, 
that,of the People v. Township Board of Salem, in which the validity of 
railroad aid bonds was denied, and a ruinous financial policy, which the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


187 


Federal Supreme Court and the Courts of nearly every State in the union 
had countenanced, was checked. Others are Southerland v. The Governor, 
denying the power_ to control the executive by mandamus; Youngblood 
V. The Sheriff, distinguishing a liquor-tax from a license system; Stuart 
V. Kalamazoo School District, maintaining high schools as part of the 
common school system supported by taxation; Park Commissioners v. 
Common Council, asserting the right of local self-government against a 
legislative attempt to compel a municipal appropriation for the purchase 
of a public park; People v. Mahaney, sustaining the legislative establish- 
rnent of a metropolitan police; Newcomer v. Van Deusen, discussing the 
liability of a keeper of an insane asylum for detaining a sane person 
whom he believes to be erazy; Allen v. Duffie, distinguishing church 
subscriptions from ordinary Sunday contracts; Weimer v. Bunhurry, 
showing that due proceeds of law may also be summary; Swart v. Kimball, 
declaring the right of any person accused of a penal olfense to be tried 
in his own neighborhood; Benjamin v. Manistee River Improvement Co., 
upholding the right to levy upon a navigable stream; Macomber v. Nichols, 
protecting the use of steam machinery, in the public highways, Ryerson v. 
Broivn, denying the protection of the doctrine of eminent domain to the 
flooding of lands for the benefit of water power mi lls; and Gregory v. 
Wendell and People v. Weitoff, defending the dealing in grain-options and 
the keeping of a pool-room, as gambling. And from the drift of his 
opinions and other writings, he has come to be conspicious as a strong, 
judicial champion of constitutional rights, of local self-government, 
and of the freedom of the press, and in some sense as guardian of the 
agencies of commercial progress and internal development.” 

^ West. Hist. Magazine, 1^68-9 {1886) 

“If I were called upon to name the most important American legal 
treatise I should say—‘Kent’s Commentaries’; if I were put on oath, 
I am afraid I should have to say, ‘Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations’.” 

—Seymour D. Thompson. 

AN ACCIDENT 

“An accident is an event happening unexpectedly and without fault; 
if there is any fault, there is liability.”— From 'Torts' 80 — note. 

H. B. KUCHIN’S ESTIMATE 

“Probably no judge upon a State Supreme Court ever left a record 
that all things considered, is superior to his.” 

— H. B. Hutchin, on 'Cooley,' 7 Gt. Am. Lawyers, 1^60. 

CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS 

This book, written by Judge Cooley, grew out of his being selected by 
Charles I. Walker, Judge James V. Campbell and Judge Thos. M. Cooley, 
the leading law lecturers of Michigan University, selecting him to lecture 
upon that subject. The book first appeared in 1868, and established 
his reputation as one of the greatest living authors upon one of the 
greatest living subjects of the day. The opportunity was not seized, but 
was thrust upon hiipi, and the performance of the task attests at once his 
genius and ability as a jurist, in this almost untrodden field of thought. 
Yet he had difficulty in getting a publisher and it looked for a time as though 
he would have to be his own publisher. But the manuscript was finally, 
though with considerable hesitation, accepted by a prominent house, 
the members of which were surprised as well as gratified by the im¬ 
mediate and great success of the book—which “stands without a rival,” 
says Dean Hutchins: “in form and substance it is and always will be a 
great legal classic, and has made Judge Cooley’s name respected where- 
ever men study American Constitutional law.” 


CALVIN COOLIDGE, Massachusetts 


THE U. S. SENATE—A CITADEL OF LIBERTY 

“Five generations ago there was revealed to the people of this nation 
a new relationship between man and man, which they declared and pro¬ 
claimed in the American constitution. Therein they recognized a legis¬ 
lature empowered to express the will of the people in law, a judiciary 
required to determine and state such law, an.d an executive charged with 
securing obedience to the law, all holding their office, not by reason of 
some superior force, but tliru the duly determined conscience of their 
countrymen. To the House, close to the heart of the nation, renewing 
its whole membership by frequent elections, representing directly the 
people, reflecting their common purpose, has been granted a full measure 
of the power of legislation and exclusive authority to orginate taxation. 
To the Senate, renewing its membership by degrees, representing, in 
part, the sovereign States, has been granted not only a full measure of 
the power of legislation, but, if possible, far more important functions. 
To it is intrusted the duty of review, that to negotiations there may be 
added ratiflcation and to appointment approval. But its greatest func¬ 
tion of all, too little mentioned, and too little understood, whether 
exercised in legislating or reviewing, is the preservation of liberty; not 
merely the rights of the majority—they little need protection—but the 
rights of the minority, from whatever source they may be assailed. The 
great object for us to seek here, for the constitution indentifles the Vice- 
Presidency with the Senate, is to continue to make this chamber, as it was 
intended by the fathers, a citadel of liberty. An enormous power is here 
conferred, capable of much good or ill, open it may be to abuse, but neces¬ 
sary wholly and absolutely necessary to secure the required result to 
whatever its faults, whatever its human imperfections. There is no legis¬ 
lative body in all history that has used its power with more wisdom 
and discretion, more uniformly for the execution of the public will, or 
more in harmony with the spirit of the authority of the people which has 
created it, than the United States Senate. 

I take up the duties the people have assigned me under the constitution, 
which we can neither enlarge nor diminish, of presiding over this Senate, 
agreeably to its rules and regulations, deeply conscious that it will con¬ 
tinue to function in harmony with its higher traditions as a great delib¬ 
erate body, without passion, and without fear unmoved by clamor, but 
most sensitive to the right, the stronghold of government according 
to law, that the vision of the past generations may be more and more the 
reality of generations yet to come.” 

— When sworn in as Vice-President, Mar. 1921, in U. S. Senate. 


THE MIND—RUFUS CHOATE 

“The idea that there is a want of sympathy in the mass of the people 
with an educated man’s mind, is much exaggerated in general belief. 
Any fine thought, or rich expression is apprehended by the common mind 
somehow; vaguely at first; but so almost any thought is, at first, vaguely 
and uncertainly apprehended by any but a thoroughly trained mind.” 

CHOATE ON READING 

“Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, 
a genuine and passionate love for reading.” 



THOMAS CORWIN (1794-1865), Ohio 


ADVICE TO AN OFFICE-SEEKER 

“I may give you a place to-day, and I can kick you out to-morrow. 
And there is another man over there at the White House, who can kick 
me out, and the people by and by can kick him out, and so it goes; but 
if you own an acre of land, it is your kingdom, and your cabin is your castle.” 
— To a young man, seeking office in Washington, D. C., while 
Corwin was Secretary of the Treasury. 

BE SOLEMN AS AN ASS 

“The late Tom Corwin, of Ohio, a man of genius and infinite humor, 
on one occasion, when lecturing me for my disposition to joke with a 
crowd, said:— 

‘‘ ‘Don’t do it, my boy. You should remember that the crowd always 
looks up to the ring-master and down on the clown. It resents that which 
amuses. The clown is the more clever fellow of the two, but he is despised. 
If you would succeed in life, you must be solemn, solemn as an ass. 
All the great monuments of earth have been built over solemn asses.’ ” 
—Don Piatt,—^Men Who Saved the Union,* 95. 

JURY,—THE BEST SCHOOL FOR A LAWYER 

“The best school for a lawyer is a two years’ service on the jury; 
without the knowledge gained there, the advocate is certain to fire 
over the heads of the twelve good and true gentlemen of the panel.” 

— Piatt's ‘Men Who Saved the Union,* p. XXL 

CORWIN MORE THAN A WIT,—A GOOD LAWYER 

“But Corwin was more than a witty stump speaker. He was a good 
lawyer, who thought deeply on the principles of government and political 
questions. His friends had hopes that he might even reach the Presidency; 
but he destroyed his political prospects by an indiscreet though brave 
speech in the Senate in February, 1847, on the Mexican War, in retort 
to Lewis Cass, who had said—‘We want room,’ replied Corwin: ‘If 
I were a Mexican, I would tell you,—“Have you not room in your own 
country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet 
you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves.” ’ This 
is no worse than Chatham:—‘If I were an American, as I am an English¬ 
man, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay 
down my arms—never—never—never.’ ”— 1 Rhodes* U. S. Hist., 300. 

“PEPPER AND SALT” 

Corwin, when Governor of Ohio, was on a political speaking tour 
with Tom Ewing, through the State, and stopped over night at the 
home of a leading politician, who had invited them to do so, but happened 
to be away from home; but instructed his niece, if they came to give 
them the “best in the house,” for they were “great men”. While waiting 
on the table at tea that evening, she thought she must use big words, with 
“big guests,” and accordingly, asked Ewing, if he would have condi¬ 
ments in his tea. He replied: “Yes, if you please.” Corwin’s eyes 
twinkled. This was too great a temptation; accordingly when she 


190 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


accosted him with the same question, he replied: “Pepper and salt, 
please, but no mustard!” 

It is said the lady never forgave him, declaring that the Governor was 
horrible and vulgar. 

GREAT ORATOR AND STORY TELLER 

“Of Mr. Corwin, it is not too much to say that in wit, in humor, in 
language, in voice, in nobility, and expressiveness of features, in all the 
requisites for fascinating and effective stump oratory, he was without an 
equal. Men would travel twenty and thirty miles to listen to the match¬ 
less orator, and even his political opponents could not help joining in 
the applause which his speeches never failed to call forth. His memory 
was not only, a perfect storehouse of historical facts, but also of anecdotes 
and stories. It was worth a ‘Sabbath day’s journey’ to hear ‘Tom Corwin’ 
(as he was familiarly called) tell a story, no matter how frequently 
heard, it was always made fresh and racy by his variable and inimit¬ 
able manner of telling it. While to his extraordinary control of the mus¬ 
cles of his face, which were always in accord with the sentiments he was 
expressing, and the anecdotes he was relating, and to his charming 
voice, the attractiveness of his speeches was in no small degree attribut¬ 
able. They were never lacking in eloquence or force. He had always 
something good to say, and he never failed to be instructive as well as 
fascinating. His power over popular and promiscuous assemblies, was 
immense. Plain farmers would not only travel long distances to hear him, 
but they would stand for hours under a burning sun, or in a pelting rain, 
seemingly oblivious of everything but the speeches by which their atten¬ 
tion was absorbed. Nor was his fame as an orator confined to Ohio. 
By his speeches in Congress, he acquired a national reputation.” 

—Hugh McCulloch's ^Men and Measures of Half a Century.' 

62-3. 

THE CREDULOUS WITNESS 

(It is said Corwin was once trying a case, in which he was opposed by 
William Wirt, when the latter tried a somewhat novel mode of discredit¬ 
ing a witness, called by Corwin, upon whose accuracy and discrimination, 
everything turned, as he was Corwin’s chief witness. Wirt undertook 
to show by him that he would believe most anything he was told. The 
following cross-examination by Wirt, was had):— 

Q, by Wirt: “Have you read Robinson Crusoe?” 

A. “Yes, sir.” 

Q. by Wirt: “Do you believe it all to be true?” 

A. “Well, yes, squire, I don’t know but what I do.” 

(The same, or similar answers were returned as to Gulliver’s Travels, 
and several, other works of fiction, Corwin all the time fidgeting and 
getting hot. Finally Mr. Wirt, considering the witness entirely flattened 
out, resigned him, with a bland smile. 

Mr. Corwin, said he had only one or two questions to ask the witness, 
and put it this way:— 

Q. “Have you ever read William Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henrv?” 

A. “Yes, sA, I have.” 

Q. “Do you believe it to be true?” 

A. “Why, no, squire, I can’t quite go that.” 

GIDEON WELLES ON CORWIN 

“The President (Abraham Lincoln) gives his ear to a class of old party 
hacks like Ewing and Corwin, men of ability and power, in their day, 
for whom he has high regard, but who are not flt to come here and persuade 
the President wrong.”— 2 Diary, 202. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


191 


CORWIN’S COMPLEXION 

“Corwin’s complexion was very dark. He was on several occasions 
supposed to be of African descent, and he was fond of relating these 
ludicrous mistakes. One of his keen retorts was made, when addressing 
a Whig mass-meeting at Marietta, Ohio. He had then great anxiety 
not to offend the Abolitionists, who were beginning to cast a large vote. 
A sharp-witted opponent to draw him out asked: ‘Shouldn’t niggers 
be permitted to sit at table with white folks, on steamboats, and at 
hotels?’ ‘Fellow-citizens,’ exclaimed Corwin, his swarthy features 
beaming with supressed fun,’ I ask you whether it is proper to ask such 
a question of a gentlemen of my color?’ The crowd cheered, and the 
questioner was silenced.” 

—1 Rhodes' U. S. History, 299; 2 Ren Perley Poore's Reminiscences, 
209. 

ANDREW D. WHITE’S TRIBUTE 

“He was the most famous stump-speaker of his time, and perhaps of 
all times, a man of great physical, intellectual and moral vigor, power¬ 
ful in argument, sympathetic in manner, of infinite wit and humor.” 

HIS TWO MOST FAMOUS SPEECHES 

His speech, in 1840, in ridicule of Isaac M. Crary, of Michigan, who 
had ponderously arraigned Oen. W. H. Harrison; and that (1847) in 
opposition to the Mexican War. 

^ ON AFRICAN SLAVERY 

(Mr. Reagan asked:—“Then I ask the gentleman for himself, and not 
for the Republican party, if he recognizes the right of people owning slaves 
to go into a territory in a Southern latitude, and occupy that territory 
with their slaves with the protection of the Government?) 

To Which Mr. Corwin replied:— 

“I will speak for myself. If you acquire territory by treaty, and the 
people in it hold slaves, I would not, against their will, interfere with 
Slavery there. I would act, in that particular, just as the Congresses of 
1798 and 1804 acted in relation to Mississippi and Orleans Territories. 
If Slavery were there, I would not disturb it. I would not interfere with 
the rights of property against the will of the people; and if you get ter¬ 
ritory where the white man cannot work, I would permit people of the 
States to send their slaves there; and when there, certainly, I would 
protect them, if protection were wanted. I agree with the gentleman 
of the extreme South in one point: whenever you can show me, that under 
the laws and the Constitution Of the United States (as you phrase it, 
under the Constitution) Slavery is lawfully in a Territory, I hold it to be 
a duty to make laws to protect property lawfully held anywhere, if such 
laws be necessary for its protection; but remember, I do not believe the 
Constitution tak^s Slavery into Territories, or anywhere else. Slavery 
is the creature of local, municipal law. Whenever you acquire a terri¬ 
tory where Slavery exists, if you have a treaty sanctioned by two-thirds 
of the Senate of the United States, you are just as sure of Slavery as we 
are sure of what we call ‘freedom’ in Ohio. I dare say that some of my 
tender-footed brethren on the Republican side of the House wince a 
little at that, but I act upon possibilities and probabilities. And there 
is another thing which you do, which is totally at war with one of the 
fundamental maxims of our Government. You begin by sending forth 
to the world the very doctrines of Rousseau’s social compact—that 
Government claims its rightful authority from the consent of the people 
governed. And then you conquer a country, and a part is ceded to you. 


192 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


but no consent of the people thus ceded is ever asked. You seize them and 
govern them, whether they consent or not. You did not ask the people 
of California, or New Mexico whether they were willing to be American 
citizens. You took the treaty, and you took the lands and the people. 
So when you get Cuba—which you will not get soon; but whenever you 
do get it, if you ever should. Slavery will be there; and the Spanish 
Government, when it cedes this island, will say that you shall take the 
people, with all their rights of property. That is sure to be done, if the 
time ever arrives when you are to acquire Cuba. So if you acquire 
territory where white men cannot work. There are such countries; 
I have been told so by the best physicians I ever knew. What do you 
want with such territory, unless you have slaves, if it be true that free 
negroes will not work without coercion? If I were the father of the world, 
and I had some children who could work in cold and temperate climates, 
I would send them there to work; and if I had children who would work; 
only in the warmer portions of the globe, I would send them there; 
and if they would not go, I would make them. I am not speaking of 
constitutional law. I look at society as it is. What will you do with the 
men who will not work, and will eat? I know what we do with them in 
Ohio. We send them to the poor-house, and make them work. Some, 
for reasons known to the law, are sent to the penitentiary, where they are 
deprived of their inalienable right, to liberty. That is a question we can¬ 
not discuss here. I state for the benefit of weak brothers, who never think 
about the matter, (Laughter) if my white son would not work in the 
proper place for him, I would punish him; and if I had a black man, who, 
like the anaconda, fattened upon malaria, and only lived well in a rice 
swamp. There I should make him go.” 

—Speech in the House of Representatives, Jan. 23rd and 2Jfth., 1860. 

LAWS OF THE LAND AND MORAL LAW 

“Are you then, under any moral obligation to obey the laws when they 
are made ? I say you are. I say every clergyman is under that obligation. 
Every man, every woman and every child when he comes to years of 
accountability, have imposed upon them a moral obligation, the discharge 
of which will be accounted and acceptable service at that great tribunal, 
where we must all stand after our ignorance has gone, and when we 
stand in th6 sunlight of eternity. How the pardoning power may be 
exercised when poor ignorant man stands up, saying that it was con¬ 
science that taught him it was right to disobey law, I have no knowledge 

.But what then? A gentleman rises up from prayer and says 

that a law is very wrong; that it commands a wicked thing; he cannot 
obey it. There are two alternatives for such a man, exile and the grave. 
Either of them is very unpleasant to weak humanity.” 

—From a lecture in Henry Ward Beecher's church, whose pastor, 
Mr. Beecher, denounced the fugitive slave law, and declared Hhe law 
of God is above all laws, national or state, constitutional or uncon¬ 
stitutional, and must first he obeyed.' Corwin gave the above in 1859. 

NAPOLEON AND THE BURNING OF MOSCOW 

“But has Prussia no atonement to make? You see this same Napoleon, 
the blind instrument of Providence, at work there. The thunders of 
his cannon at Jena proclaim the work of retribution for Poland’s wrongs; 
and the successors of the Great Frederick, the drill-sergeant of Europe, 
are seen flying across the sandy plain that surrounds their capital, right 
glad if they may escape captivity or death. But how fares it with the 
Autocrat of Russia? Is he secure in his share of the spoils of Poland? 
No. Suddenly we see, sir, six hundred thousand armed men marching 
to Moscow. Does his Vera Cruz protect him now? Far from it. Blood, 



GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


193 


slaughter, desolation spread abroad over the land, and finally the con¬ 
flagration of the old commercial metropolis of Russia closes the retri¬ 
bution she must pay for her share in the dismemberment of her weak 
and impotent neighbor. Mr. President, a mind more prone to look for 
the judgment of Heaven in the doings of men than mine, cannot fail 
in this to see the providence of God. When Moscow burned, it seemed 
as if the earth was lighted up, that the nations might behold the scene. 
As that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved and rolled upward, and 
yet higher, till it licked the stars, and fired the whole heavens, it did 
seem as though the God of the nations was writing in characters of flame 
on the front of his throne, that doom that shall fall upon the strong nation 
which tramples in scorn upon the weak. And what fortune awaits him, 
the appointed executor of this work, when it was all done? He, too, 
conceived the notion that his destiny pointed onward to universal do¬ 
minion. France was too small—Europe, he thought, should bow down 
before him. But as soon as this idea took possession of his soul, he, too, 
becomes powerless. His terminus must recede, too. Right there, while 
he witnessed the humiliation, and doubtless meditated the subjection 
of Russia. He who holds the winds in His fist gathered the snows of the 
north and blew them upon his six hundred thousand men; they fled— 
they froze—they perished. And now the mighty Napoleon, who had 
resolved on universal dominion, he too, is summoned to answer for the 
violation of that ancient law, ‘thou shalt not covet anything which is 
thy neighbor’s.’ How is the mighty fallen! He, beneath whose proud 
footstep Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba, and now finally a 
prisoner on the rock of St. Helena, and there, on a barren island, in an 
unfrequented sea, in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the 
death-bed of the mighty conqueror. All his annexations have come to 
that 1 His last hour is now come, and he, the man of destiny, he who had 
rocked the world as with the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless, 
still—even as a beggar, so he died. On the wings of a tempest that raged 
with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only Power that controlled 
him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior, another 
witness to the existence of that eternal decree, that they who do not 
rule in righteousness shall perish from the earth. 

“He has found ‘room’ at last. And Prance, she, too, has found ‘room.’ 
Her ‘eagles’ now no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the 
Po, and the Borysthenes. They have returned home, to their old eyrie, 
between the Alps, the Rhine and the Pyrenees; so shall it be with yours. 
You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras, they may wave 
with insolent triumph in the Halls of the Montezumas, the armed men 
of Mexico may quail before them, but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted 
in prayer to the God of Justice, may call down against you a Power, in 
the presence of which, the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into 
ashes.”— From speech on the Mexican War, in U. S. Senate, Feb. 11, 18J^7. 

VOTER SHOULD BE INTELLIGENT 

“As I have traveled through the country and beheld the church-spires 
and school houses, it seemed incomprehensible how with the advantages 
of education and instruction from the pulpit, there could be a gener¬ 
ation of men who would disregard the lessons of experience and the teach¬ 
ings of history so much as to fail in the giving of an intelligent and 
patriotic vote. * * * * . 

“The hand of the Almighty is as plain to be seen in the interposition 
in our behalf during the revolutionary struggles as it was in the rolling 
waves of the Red Sea over the hosts of Pharaoh as they were pursuing 
the Israelites. We could not hope to escape the fate of the ‘chosen 
people’ in whose history were so terribly fulfilled the words of prophecy, un¬ 
less we appreciated our blessings and struggled to preserve our birth¬ 
right; and yet the history of man seemed to be the same in all ages. 


194 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


three thousand years ago, when the Almighty, by a miraculous exercise 
of His power, had brought the children of Isreal out of their Egyptian 
captivity, we found them, when it might have been supposed that the 
wonder of the miracle was still impressing them with its awful grandeur, 
worshipping the golden calf! 

“The prophet Isaiah, in denouncing the sins and the punishment of 
Judah, had said:—‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s 
crib; but Israel doth not know—my people, doth not consider.’ The people 
did not ‘consider’—they did not think. Every man should break away 
from the trammels of party—he should think —think for himself—and so 
discharge his duty, as if knowing that upon him alone rested the responsi¬ 
bility of faithfully and honestly acting for the welfare of the twenty-six 
millions of this nation—as if he were the only man who had a vote—as 
if he were possessed of despotic power, and his will was the law.” 

—From speech at Dayton, 0., Sep. 30, 1858. 

Perhaps no orator, not of the pulpit, ever drew more frequent illus¬ 
trations from the Bible. Like Fisher Ames, he is said to have been a 
constant reader of the Bible, and to have greatly admired the simplicity 
and purity of the language of the common English version. His mind 
was well stored with biblical history and deeply imbued with the bold 
and tender imagery of Hebrew poetry. He sometimes advised a law stu¬ 
dent to read the Bible as a first book in his course of studies.— Author. 

RIDICULE OF GEN. ISAAC E. CRARY 

^ “Alexander the Great spurred his horse foremost into the river, and led 
his Macedonians across the Granicus to rout the Persians who stood full 
opposed on the other side of the stream. True, this youth conquered the 
world and made himself master of what had constituted the Medean, 
Persian, Assyrian and Chaldean empires. Still, according to the judg¬ 
ment of us warriors by nature, the mighty Macedonian would have con¬ 
sulted good sense by coming over here, if, indeed, there were any here¬ 
abouts in those days, and studying, like my friend from Michigan, first 
Tidd’s Practice and Espinasse’s Nisi Prius and a little snatch of Steuben, 
and serving as a general of militia awhile. Sir, Alexander the Great might 
have made a man of himself in the art of war, had he even been a member 
of our Congress, and heard us colonels discuss the subject of an afternoon 
or two. Indeed, Alexander, or Satan, I doubt not, would have improved 
greatly in strategy by observing, during this session, the tactics of the 
Adminstration party on the New Jersey election question. Mr. Speaker, 
this objection to a general, because he will fight, is not original with my 
friend from Michigan. I remember a great authority, in point, agreeing 
with the gentleman in this. In the times of the Henrys, 4th, and 5th, 
of England, there lived one Captain Jack Falstaff. If Shakespeare may be 
trusted, his opinions of the art military were exactly those of the 
gentleman from Michigan. He uniformly declared as his deliberate judg¬ 
ment on the subject, that ‘discretion was the better part of valor’ and 
this is an authority for the gentleman. But who shall decide? Thus 
the authority stands—Alexander, the mighty Greek, and Napoleon 
Bonaparte and Harrison on one side, and Captain John Falstaff and the 
General from Michigan on the other! Sir, I must leave a question thus 
sustained by authorities both ways to posterity. Perhaps the lights of 
another age may enable the world to decide it; I confess my inability to say 
on which side the weight of authority lies.” 

—From speech in answer to the Hon. Isaac E. Crary, of Michigan, in 
criticism of the military conduct of Gen. Wm. H. Harrison, House of 
Representatives, Feb. Ilf, 181f0. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


195 


SAMUEL SHELLABARGER ON HIS DEATH 

“When we laid him down he soon said to us, by a significant act, 
what he could not say by speech—‘one side of me is dead.’ (He died with 
a paralytic stroke.) ^ And there at night I parted with that stricken man. 
He, who touched with the sceptre of his imperial and God-like intellect 
States, Nations, People, Courts and Senators, and made them all bow 
to the majesty of its power, was now touched—in his turn—touched by 
the sceptre of his Lord, and instantly bowed his head, and laid himself 
submissively down and died. 

* * *-our hearts, though young and brave. 

Still like muffled drums are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave’.” 

—From a letter written by Samuel Shellaharger, who happened to he 
sojourning in Washington when Corwin died there from paralysis. 

COL. R. G. INGERSOLL’S REVERENCE FOR CORWIN 

It is said that Col. Ingersoll, being booked for a lecture in Lebanon, 
Ohio, the burial place of Corwin, where the inhabitants thereof had 
never marked his grave with even a slab, wrote the committee:— 

“I hereby cancel my engagement to lecturedn your city. Any people 
so inhospitable as not to even mark the last, sad resting place of a great 
man like Corwin, are not worthy of a few thoughts from me!” 


THE U. S. SUPREME COURT, BY EDWARD J. PHELPS 

“We cannot forget that the origin of the United States Supreme 
Court was an experiment, untried and uncertain. Judicial history has 
not furnished another example of a court created by an authority superior 
to legislation and beyond the reach of executive power, clothed with a 
jurisdiction above the law it was appointed to administer, andfcharged, 
not merely with the general course of public justice, but with the limita¬ 
tion of the powers of political government, and the adjustment of the 
conflicting claims of sovereign States. The hundred years that now 
terminate have tested the value of all American institutions. Fortunate 
as they have been for the most part, it will yet be the judgment of dis¬ 
passionate history that no other has so completely justified the faith of 
its authors, or fulfilled with such signal success the purpose of its founda¬ 
tion. * * * j^g principal and largest function was designed to be, 

as it has been, the defence and preservation of the Constitution that 
created it as the permanent fundamental law on which our system of 
government depends. Had that instrument been left only directory to 
the legislature, to be construed and given effect as the exigencies of party 
or the purposes of the hour might demand; had it been referred to the 
conflicting determination of various courts, with no supreme arbiter to 
correct their mistakes, or to harmonize their disagreements, so that its 
meaning might depend upon the State or the tribunal in which the question 
happened to arise, it would speedily have become but the shadow of an 
authority that had no real existence, fruitful in a discord it was powerless 
to allay. American experience has made it an axiom in political science 
that no written constitution of government can hope to stand without a 
paramount and independent tribunal to determine its construction and 
to enforce its precepts in the last resort. This is the great and foremost 
duty cast by the Constitution, for the sake of the Constitution, upon 
the Supreme Court of the United States.”— Delivered at the Centennial 
Anniversary of the U. S. Supreme Court, Feb. J, 1890, in New York 
City, under the auspices of the New York Bar Association. 




JOHN J. CRITTENDEN (1787-1863), Kentucky 

TRUTH, JUSTICE AND MERCY 

“I have somewhere heard or read a story from one of those trans¬ 
cendent German writers, which tells us that when the Almighty designed 
to create man, the various angels of his attributes came in their order 
before Him and spoke of his purpose. Truth said: ‘Create him not. 
Father. He will deny the right, deny his obligations to Thee, and deny 
the sacred and inviolate truth, therefore, create him not.’ Justice said: 
‘Create him not. Father. He will fill the world with injustice and wrong 
—he will desecrate Thy holy temple-^do deeds of violence and of blood, 
and in the very first generation—he will wantonly slay his brother. 
Therefore, create him not.’ But gentle Mercy knelt by the throne and 
whispered: ‘Create him. Father. I will be with him in all his wanderings 
—I will follow his wayward steps—and by the lessons he shall learn 
from the experience of his own errors, I will bring him back to Thee.’ 
And thus concludes the writer, learn. Oh man, mercy to thy fellowman, 
if thou wouldst bring him back to thee and to God.” 

— Jno. J. Crittenden, defense of Matt F. Ward for shooting W. H. G. 
Butler, in Louisville, Ky., principal of the Louisville High School. 
The trial was had in Hardin Co., Ky., Apr. ’5J. Thos. F. Marshall 
was also for defense. Verdict, ^Not guilty V 

REPLY TO A WINDY LAWYER 

“Gentlemen of the Jury (rubbing his hand several times over his eye-lids) 
I have either slept or dreamed, or I have had a vivid waking dream, which 
I can scarcely dispel. I thought I had gone out on a whaling vessel, 
the winds and waves were high, and the mighty waters were roaring 
around me. Suddenly the sailors cried out, ‘All hands on deck, the 
whale is upon us, she blows!’ I looked, and there, indeed, was the monster 
of the deep; its tail was flying through the air and the surging waves, 
till we were enveloped in mist. I am stunned, confused, and your Honor 
must grant me a few moments to recover my self-possession.” 

—John J. Crittenden, Ky. {1787-1863). From reply to General 
Flournoy, who had torn up sky and earth in an argument for the 
prosecution. 

He, Crittenden, was Attorney-General of the U. S., 1850-3; nominated 
by President J. Q. Adams, in 1829, an Associate Justice of the U. S. 
Supreme Court, but not confirmed. 

“One of the noblest intellects of his generation,” says Benjamin Perley 
Poore. 

“Inferior to no man in America as a professional lawyer and eloquent 
orator, and was of as pure and incorruptible integrity as any man who 
ever lived,”— Ben Hardin, p. 356, in his Life by Lucius P. Little. 

WHY LAWS ARE MADE 

“It is upon a want of confidence in men that all human law is made. 
With a perfect confidence in men, why are your laws made against 
murder, against theft, against robbery? Why do nations all over the 
world cry out for written constitutions?” 

—John J. Crittenden, From Farewell to Senate, 1861. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


197 


AGAINST SECESSION 

“I do not a^ee that there is no power in the President to preserve 
the Union; I will say that now._ If we have a Union at all, and if, as the 
President thinks, there is no right to secede on the part of any State 
(and I agree with him in that), I think there is a right to employ our 
power to preserve the Union.” 

—In U. S. Senate, Dec. 4-, I860, 2 Nicolay and Hay^s Life of A. 

Lincoln, 404. 

Mr. Crittenden was appointed by J. Q. Adams attorney for the United 
States, for the District of Ky., In 1827, but was removed by General 
Jackson in '29. The same year, he was nominated by President Adams 
to fill the vacancy on the U. S. Supreme Bench occasioned by the death 
of Judge Trimble. A partisan Senate, resolved not to act during a recess 
of Confess, and thus gave Gen. Jackson a chance to fiU the vacancy. 
“Kept in the shade by Clay, he became somewhat crabbed, but his was 
one of the noblest intellects of his generation. His persuasive eloquence, 
his sound judgment, his knowledge of law, his lucid manner of stating 
facts, and his complete grasp of every case which he examined had made 
him a power in the Senate and in the Supreme Court, as he was destined 
to be in the cabinet, Attorney-General, under President Harrison.” 

—2 Perley's Rem., 250. 

Born in 1787, educated at William and Mary college, 1807-9; Attorney- 
General of Territory of Ill., 1829-35; U. S. Senator from Ky., 1827; 
Attorney-General of the United States, 1850-3; argued Warring v. 
Clarke (5 Howard, 441) for defendant, opposed by Reverdy Johnson. 
Was Govenor of Ky.,' 1848-50.— Author. 


WENDELL PHILLIPS’ DEVOTION TO ANTI-SLAVERY 

Just after Wendell Phillips was admitted to practice law, he saw a 
mob, composed of the best citizens of Boston, in October, 1835, denying 
to American women the right of liberty—^insulted for befriending their 
innocent sisters, whose children were sold from their arms. He saw an 
American citizen (Garrison) assailed by a furious mob in the City of 
James Otis, for saying with James Otis that man’s right to liberty is 
inherent and inalienable; and he said:— 

“I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston over which my mother 
led my baby feet, and if God grants me time enough I will make them too 
pure for the footsteps of a slave!” 

And so Phillips gave up the practice of law, and dedicated his life to 
that service. 


PRACTICE 

“The theory of swimming is easy enough, not so the practice. Plunge 
in, strike out with a good breast stroke, draw in and thrust back your 
feet and there you are,—at the bottom.” 

—Richard Harris, ^ Hints on Advocacy,’’ English writer. 




JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN (1750-1817), Ireland 


THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS 

“What then remains? The liberty of the press only, that sacred pal¬ 
ladium which no influence, no power, no minister, no government, which 
nothing by the depravity or folly or corruption of a jury can ever destroy. 
And what calamities are the people saved from by having public commun¬ 
ication left open to them? I will tell you, gentlemen, what they are 
saved from; I will tell you, also, to what both are exposed by shutting 
up that communication. In one case, sedition speaks aloud and walks 
abroad; the demagogue goes forth; the public eye is upon him; he frets 
his busy hour upon the stage; but soon either weariness, or bribe, or 
punishment, or disappointment bears him down or drives him off, and he 
appears no more. 

“In the other case, how does the work of sedition go forward ? Night 
after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark and casts another 
and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour of fatal maturity 
shall arrive, he will apply the torch. If you doubt of the horrid conse¬ 
quences of suppressing the effusion even of individual discontent, look 
to those enslaved countries where the protection of despotism is supposed 
to be secured by such restraints. Even the person of the despot there is 
never in safety. Neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations 
of the slave have any slumber, the one anticipating the moment of 
peril, the other watching the opportunity of aggression. 

“The fatal crises is equally a surprise upon both; the decisive instant 
is precipitated without warning, by folly on the one side, o ’ by frenzy 
on the other; and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. 
In those unfortunate countries, one can not read it without horror—there 
are officers whose province it is to have the water which is to be drunk 
by their rulers sealed up in bottles lest some wretched miscreant should 
throw poison into the draught. 

“But, gentlemen, if you wish for a nearer and more interesting example, 
you have it in the history of your own revolution. You have it at the 
memorable period when the monarch (James II) found a servile acquies¬ 
cence in the ministers of his folly, when the liberty of the Press was 
trodden under foot, when venal sheriffs returned packed juries, to carry 
into effect those fatal conspiracies of the few against the many, when 
the devoted benches of public justice were filled by some of those found¬ 
lings of fortune who, overwhelmed in the torrent of corruption at an early 
period, lay at the bottom like drowned bodies while soundness or sanity 
remained in them; but at length, becoming buoyant by putrifaction, 
they rose as they rotted, and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, 
where they were drifted along, the objects of terror, and contagion, and 
abomination. 

“In that awful moment of a nation’s travail, of the last gasp of tyranny 
and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is the example! The 
press extinguished, the people enslaved, and the prince undone. As the 
advocate of society, therefore, of peace, of domestic liberty, and the 
lasting union of the two countries, I conjure you to guard the liberty of 
the Press, that great -sentinel of the State, that grand detector of public 
imposture; guard it because, when it sinks, there sinks with it in one 
common grave, the liberty of the subject, and the security of the Crown.” 

—Speech in defense of A. H. Rowan, for seditious libel, 179Jli.. 

It was in this case that Curran began a series of defenses in State 
Trials, which form the chief basis of his fame as an orator.— The Author. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


199 


SLAVERY 

“No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; 
no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or . an 
African pn may have burned upon him; no matter in what disastrous 
battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what 
solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the 
first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the 
god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; 
his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around 
him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the 
irresistible genius of universal emancipation.” 

—From Speech in defense of A. H. Rowan, for seditious libel. 

TRIBUTE TO SCOTLAND 

“We measure inaccessible heights by the shadows which they project, 
where the lowness and the distance of the light form the length of the 
shade. There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity which 
disdains assenting to obvious truths and delights in catching at the im¬ 
probability of circumstances as its best ground of faith. To what other 
cause, gentlemen, can you ascribe that, in the wise, the reflecting, and 
the philosophic nation of Great Britain, a printer has been found guilty 
of a libel for publishing those resolutions to which the present minister 
of that kingdom had actually subscribed his name? 

“To what other cause, can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more 
astonishing, in such a country as Scotland, a nation cast in the happy 
medium between the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty and 
the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth; cool and ardent, adventurous 
and persevering; winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every 
science, with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned 
as she is with the spoils of every art, and decked with the wreath of every 
muse; from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her Hume, to the 
sweet and simple, but not less sublime and pathetic, morality of her 
Burns, how from the bosom of a country like that, genius and character 
and talents should be banished to a distant, barbarous soil; condemned 
to pine under the horrid communion of vulgar vice and base-born 
profligacy for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the’ 
continuance of human life ? But I will not further press any idea that is 
painful to me and I am sure must be painful to you.” 

—Also from his speech in defense of A. H. Rowan. 

Says Thos. Davis, p. 39, in his Life of Curran: “His vindication of 
the volunteers, and the liberty of the Press, in the Rowan case, are all 
his own, and unapproached, by anything in Cicero or Erskine.” 

Lord Brougham, in his defense of Hunt, pronounces Curran’s speech 
in defense of Rowan, “the most eloquent speech ever delivered at the 
Bar,” and Brougham was the first of England’s oratorical critics. 

A FADED, FALLEN AND DISGRACED WIFE, DAMAGES TO 

HUSBAND 

“The learned counsel has told you that this unfortunate woman 
(Mrs. Massey) is not to be estimated at forty thousand pounds. Fatal 
and unquestionable is the truth of this assertion. Alas! gentlemen, she 
is no longer worth anything; faded, fallen, degraded and disgraced, she 
is worth less than nothing. But, it is for the honor, the hope, the expecta¬ 
tion, the tenderness and the comforts that have been blasted by the 
defendant, and have fled forever, that you are to remunerate the plaintiff 
by the punishment of the defendant. It is not her present value which 
you are to weigh; but it is her value at that time, when she sat basking 


200 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


in a husband’s love with the blessing of Heaven on her head, and its 
purity in her heart; when she sat among her family and administered 
the morality of the parental board; estimate that past value, compare 
it with its present value, compare it with its deplorable diminution, and 
it may lead you to form some judgment of the severity of the injury 
and the extent of the compensation. 

“The learned counsel has told you you ought to be cautious, because 
your verdict cannot be set aside for excess. The assertion is just; but 
has he treated you fairly by its apphcation ? His cause would now allow 
him to be fair, for why is the rule adopted in this single action ? Because, 
this being practically an injury to the most susceptible of all human 
feelings, it leaves the injury of the husband to be ascertained by the 
sensibility of the jury, and does not presume to measure the justice of 
their determination by the cold and chilly exercise of its own discretion. 
In any other action it is easy to calculate. If a tradesman’s arm is cut 
off, you can measure the loss which he has sustained; but the wound 
of feeling and the agony of the heart cannot be judged by any standard 
with which I am acquainted. You are, therefore, unfairly dealt with 
when you are called on to appreciate the present suffering of the husband 
by the present guilt, delinquency and degradation of his wife. As well 
might you, if called on to give compensation to a man for the murder of 
his dearest friend, to find the measure of his injury by weighing the ashes 
of the dead. But it is not, gentlemen of the jury, by weighing the ashes 
of the dead that you would estimate the loss of the survivor.” 

—John P. Curran, in Massy v. Headfort, for criminal conversa¬ 
tion, and obtained a verdict for 10,000 pounds, equivalent to $50,000. 

“This speech,” says Thos. Davis, Curran’s biographer,“ against 
Lord Headfort (largely colored by Curran’s own experience, as his wife 
of 25 years, left him to go with Rev. Mr. Sandys) is beyond comparison 
the most persuasive pleading ever uttered in a case not involving national 
interests or public passions. By his ability and his personal sympathy 
for the case, he made it a great contest between virtue and vice.” 

THE FAMILY ALTAR 

“There is another consideration, gentlemen, which, I think, most 
imperiously demands even a vindictive award of exemplary damages, 
and that is the breach of hospitality. To us peculiarly does it belong to 
avenge the violation of its altar. The hospitality of other countries is 
a matter of necessity or convention; in savage nations of the first, in 
polished of the latter; but the hospitality of an Irishman is not the run¬ 
ning account of posted and legered courtesies, as in other countries; 
it springs, like all his qualities, his faults, his virtues, directly from his 
heart. The heart of an Irishman is by nature bold, and he confides; 
it is tender, and he loves; it is generous, and he gives; it is social and he 
is hospitable. This sacrilegious intruder has profaned the religion of that 
sacred altar so elevated in our worship, so precious in our devotion; and 
it is our privilege to avenge the crime. You must either pull down the 
altar and abolish the worship, or you must preserve its sanctity unde¬ 
based. There is no alternative between the universal exclusion of all 
mankind from your threshold, and the most rigorous punishment of him 
who is admitted and betrays. This defendant has been so trusted, has so 
betrayed, and you ought to make him a most signal example.” 

—John P. Curran, Massy v. Headfort. 

PENALTY ACCORDING TO CRIME 

“I make the observation, not only in order to call upon you to dis¬ 
charge any impression not supported by testimony, but to remind you 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


201 


also of another incontrovertible maxim, not only of the human law of 
England, but of eternal justice upon which that is founded, that the 
more horrid and atrocious the nature of any crime charged upon any man is 
the more clear and invincible should be the evidence upon which he is 
convicted. Therefore, gentlemen, I pre.sume to tell you, that in pro¬ 
portion as the crime is atrocious and horrible, in the same proportion 
ought the evidence to be clear and irresistible. Let me, therefore en¬ 
deavor to 'discharge the duty I owe to the unfortunate man at the bar, 
(for unfortunate I consider him, whether he be convicted or acquitted) 
by dramng your attention to a consideration of the facts charged, and 
comparing it with the evidence abducted to support it. As the coroner 
upon an inquest of murder, who thought a man standing by was guilty. 
Why ?—because three drops of blood fell from his nose. This was thought 
to be invincible proof of his guilt. It reminds me also of an old woman 
who undertook to prove that a ghost had appeared. ‘How do you know 
there was a ghost in the room?’ ‘Oh! I’ll prove to you there must have 
been a ghost,—for the very moment I went in, I fainted flat on the 
floor!’ ”— John P. Curran, — Trial of the Dublin Defenders. 

THE IMPORTANCE OP AN OATH 

“But, gentlemen, suppose I am mistaken in both points of my argu¬ 
ment; suppose the prisoner (if the evidence was true) did compass the 
King’s death, and adhere to the King’s enemies, what are you to found 
your verdict upon? Upon your oaths; what are they to be founded upon? 
Upon the oath of the witness, and what is that founded upon? Upon 
this, and this only, that he does believe that there is an eternal God, 
an intelligent supreme existence, capable of inflicting eternal punishment 
for offences, or conferring eternal compensation upon man after he has 
passed the boundary of the grave. But where the witness believes 
he is possessed of a perishing soul, and that there is nothing upon which 
punishment or reward can be exerted, he proceeds regardless of the 
number of offences, and undisturbed by the terrors of exhausted fancy 
which might save you from fear that your verdict is founded upon per¬ 
jury. _ I suppose he imagines that the body is actuated by some Mnd 
of animal machinery. I know not in what language to describe his 
notions. Suppose his opinion of the beautiful system framed by the 
Almighty hand to be, that it is all folly and blindness, compared to the 
manner in which he considers himself to have been created; or his abomin¬ 
able heart conceives its ideas; or his tongue communicated his notions. 
Suppose him, I say, to think so; what is perjury to him; He needs no 
creed, if he thinks his miserable body can take eternal refuge in the grave 
and the last puff of his nostrils can send his soul into annihilation. _ He 
laughs at the idea of eternal justice, and tells you that the grave, into 
which he sinks as a log, forms an entrenchment against the throne of 
God, and the vengeance of exasperated justice. 

“Do not feel, my fellow-countrymen, a sort of anticipated consolation, 
in reflecting, that religion—which gave us comfort in our early days 
enabled us to sustain the stroke of affliction, and endeared us to one 
another—when we see our friends sinking into the earth, fills us with 
the expectation that we rise again; that we but sleep for a while, to wake 
forever? But what kind of communion can you hold, what interchange 
expect, what confidence place, in that abject slave, that condemned, 
despaired wretch, who acts under the idea that he is only the folly of a 
moment, that he cannot step beyond the threshold of the grave, that 
which is an object of terror to the best, and of hope to the confiding, is 
to him contempt, or despair? 

“Bear with me, my countrymen; I feel my heart runs away with me,— 
the worst men can only be cool. What is the law of this country ? If 
the witness does not believe in^God, or a future state, you cannot swear 


202 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


him. What swear him upon? Is it upon the book, or the leaf? You 
might as well swear him by a bramble or a coin. The ceremony of kissing 
is only the external symbol, by which man seals himself to the precept, 
and says, ‘May God so help me, as I swear the truth.’ He is then attached 
to the divinity, upon the condition of telling truth; and he expects mercy 
from heaven, as he performs h*is understanding. But the infidel,—By 
what can you catch his soul, or by what can you hold it? You repulse 
him from giving evidence; for he has no conscience, no hope to cheer him, 
no punishment to dread.”— Jno. P. Curran—Trial of Henry Sheares. 

TWO WITNESSES IN TREASON 

“It is laid down by Lord Coke, that two witnesses are necessary to 
convict (3rd Inst. 26) ‘It seemeth that by ancient common law, one 
accuser or witness was not sufficient to convict any person by our books, 
and I remember no authority in our books to the contrary.’ I know 
of no judicial determination in our books to the contrary of what Lord 
Coke here states: the common law is grounded upon the principles of 
reason. I consider the statutes of Edward VI, and William III, as 
statutes which had become necessary from the abuses occasioned by a 
departure from the common law. After the statute of Edward VI, 
expressly declaring the necessity of two witnesses, the Courts had 
fallen into, perhaps, a well intentioned departure from the meaning of 
the statute of Edward VI, so far that the place of two witnesses was 
supplied in evidence by anything that the Court thought a material 
additional circumstance in the case; and to the time of William III such a 
departure had prevailed, and this was thought sufficient to discharge 
everything respecting the obligations of the Statute. It became neces¬ 
sary, therefore, to enact, and that by enactment to do away with the 
abuse of the principle of the common law, by expressly declaring that no 
man should be indicted or convicted except by two witnesses to one 
overt act, or one witness to one act, and a second to another act of high 
treason of the same species. And there seems to me to be a sound dis¬ 
tinction between the case of high treason, and of any other crime. It 
is the only crime which any subject is left to fear of punishment which 
he may feel, or to the dictates of his conscience to guard himself against 
transgressing the law; but treason is a breach of his oath of allegiance, 
and is so far like the case of perjury; and, therefore, in the case of treason 
no man should be convicted by the testimony of a single witness, because 
it amounts to no more than oath against oath; so that it is only reasonable 
there should be another to turn the scale; and, therefore, it is that I 
conceive Lord Coke well warranted in laying down this rule, a rule de¬ 
duced from general justice, and even from the law of God himself. Gentle¬ 
men, what I am now stating, I offer to the Court as matter of law.” 

—John P. Curran—Trial of Rev. Wm. Jackson. 

DENUNCIATION OF A WITNESS 

“And shall such a pitiful miscreant, after he has been worked upon 
by fear of death and the hope of compensation, be brought out to give 
evidence against his fellows? Shall the mild and wholesome councils 
of this government be held over catacombs of living death, where the 
wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dis¬ 
solve, and is then dug up as a witness ? Have you not seen him, after the 
resurrection from that region of death and corruption, make his appear¬ 
ance upon the table, the living image of life and of death, and the 
supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked when he entered, 
how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach? Have 
you not seen how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, 
in the undissembled homage of deferential horror? How his glance, like 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


203 


the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and 
mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of 
woe and death—a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, 
no force resist, no antidote prevent? There was an antidote—a juror’s 
oath!—but even that adamantine chain, that bound the integrity of 
man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and molted in the 
breath that issues from the informer’s mouth; conscience swings from 
her moorings, and the appalled and affrighted juror consults his own 
safety in the surrender of the victim!” 

— Jno. P. Curran—From Defense of Finnerty, for libel, 1797. 

CURRAN’S GRATITUDE 

‘‘Allow me, gentlemen,” said Curran, one evening to a large party, 
‘‘to give you a sentiment. When a boy, I was one morning playing 
at marbles in the village of Ball-Alley, with a light heart, and a lighter 
pocket. The gibe and jest went gladly round, and when suddenly among 
us appeared a stranger, of a remarkable and very cheerful aspect; his 
intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage. 
He was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the 
happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his 'memory. Heaven 
bless him! I see his fine form at the distance of half a century, just as 
he stood before me, in the little Ball-Alley, in the day of my childhood. 
His name was Boyse; he was the rector of Newmarket. To me he took 
a particular fancy. I was winning and full of waggery; thinking of 
everything that was eccentric, and by no means a miser of my eccen¬ 
tricities; everyone was welcome to a share of them, and I had plenty 
to spare, after having freighted the company. Some sweetmeats easily 
bribed me home with him. I learned from Boyse my alphabet, and 
my grammar and the rudiments of the classics. He taught me all he 
could, and then he sent me to a school at Middleton. In short, he made 
me a man. I recollect it was about thirty-five years afterwards, when I 
had risen to some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Par¬ 
liament, on my return one day from the court, I found an old gentle¬ 
man seated alone in my drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed on 
each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole air be¬ 
speaking the consciousness of one quite at home. He turned round— 
it was my friend of Ball-Alley. I rushed instinctively into his arms, 
and burst into tears. Words cannot describe the scene which followed. 
You are right, sir—you are right! The chimney-piece is yours—the 
pictures are yours—the house is yours! You gave me all I have—my 
friend—my benefactor! He dined with me, and in the evening I caught 
the tear glistening in his fine blue eye, when he saw poor little Jack, the 
creature of his bounty, rising in the House of Commons to reply to a 
right honorable. Poor Boyse! He is now gone; and no suitor has a 
larger deposit of practical benevolence in the Court above. This is his 
wine—let us drink to his memory.” 

—John P. Curran—From Law and Lawyers, p. 28. 

SAND AND WAVES OF THE SEA 

“Where the public calamity generates imps like these, their number 
is as the sands of the sea, and the fury as insatibale as its waves.” 

— Jno. P. Curran—From Hevy. v. Sirr, for false imprisonment. 

GRIMACES OF A BABOON 

“Protect me from the obscene and unnatural grimaces of a baboon.” 

— Jno. P. Curran. 


204 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE JUDGE IN CONSULTATION WITH A DOG 

“I beg pardon; I thought you were in consultation.” 

— Jno. P. Curran—remark to the Judge, who was foundling a dog, 
while Curran was arguing a case before him. 

DIGNITY 

“The essence of dignity consists much more in rest than in action.” 
— Jno. P. Curran—from letter to Duke of Essex. 

TRUTH AND ERROR 

“Truth is to be sought only by slow and painful progress. Error, in 
its nature, is flippant and compendious; it hops with airy and fastidious 
levity, over proofs and arguments, and perches upon assertion which it 
calls conclusion.” 

—John P. Curran, In case of Alderman Howison Before Lord Clare, 
1790. 

DENUNCIATION OF THE PERJURER, O’BRIEN 

“Do you not see him coiling himself in the scaly circles of his perjury, 
making anticipated battle against the attack that he knew would be 
made, and spitting his venom against the man that might have given 
evidence of the infamous character, if he dared appear?”— Jno. P. Curran. 

OUTBURST TO A JURY 

“Did they suppose they were addressing the liquorish loyalty of a 
guzzling corporation?”— Jno. P. Curran—in defense of Dr. Drennan, 179^. 

LOVE 

“Love is a noble and generous passion; it can be founded on a pure 
and ardent friendship, on an exalted respect, on an implicit confidence 
in its object.”— Curran—from Massy v. Headfort 

AN INDEPENDENT BAR 

“The independence of the bar is the only unfailing safeguard of justice, 
and of that liberty without which justice is but a name.” 

— Curran—Reply to a Catholic Board. 

Curran studied and practiced oratory daily, reading and speaking alone 
aloud and slowly. Regarded Antony’s oration over Caesar’s dead body, 
the most perfect specimen of oratory; admired the classics and the Bible; 
chose as his favorite authors,—Stearne, Junius’s Letters, and Thompson’s 
Seasons; was fond of historical studies, and sympathized with the Amer¬ 
ican Revolution; and was, like O’Connell, an ardent reader of novels 
all his hfe, Byron said: “I have heard him speak more poetry than I 
have ever seen written.”— The Author. 

A MINION OF AUTHORITY 

“But to what end, my lords, offer arguments to such men? A little 
and a peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall it be corrected by 
refutation? How fruitless would it have been to represent to that wretched 
chancellor, that he was betraying those rights which he was sworn to 
maintain, that he was involving a government in disgrace, and a king- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


205 


dom in a panic and consternation; that he was violating every sacred 
duty, and every solemn engagement that bound him to himself, and his 
country, his sovereign, and his God! Alas, my lords, by what argument 
could any man hope to reclaim or to dissuade a mean, illiberal, and 
unprincipal minion of authority, induced by his profligacy to undertake, 
and bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere? He would probably 
have replied to the most unanswerable arguments, by some curt, con¬ 
tumelious, and unmeaning apothegm, delivered with the fretful smile 
of irritated self-sufficiency, and disconcerted arrogance, or even, if he 
could be dragged by his fears to a consideration of the question, by what 
miracle could the pigmy capacity of a stunted pedant be enlarged to a 
reception of the subject? The endeavor to approach it would have only 
removed him to a greater distance than he was before, as a little hand 
that strives to grasp a mighty globe, is thrown back by the re-action of its 
own effort to comprehend. It may be given to an Hale, or an Hardwicke, to 
discern and retract a mistake; the errors of such men are only the specks 
that arise for a moment upon the surface of a splendid luminary; consumed 
by its heat, or irradiated by its light, they soon purge and disappear; but 
the perverseness of a mean and narrbw interest, are like the excresences 
that grow upon a body naturally cold and dark, no fire to waste them, 
and no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce an incorrigible 
permanency in the union with kindred frost and kindred opacity. Nor, 
indeed, my lords, except where the interest of millions can be affected 
by the folly of the vice of an individual, need it be much regretted, that 
to the things not worthy of being made better, it hath not pleased Provi¬ 
dence to afford the privilege of improvement." 

—From speech on the night of election of Lord Mayor of the City of 
Dublin, 1790. Lord Clare, was the Lord Chancellor, between whom and 
Curran there existed an unextinguishable animosity. 

“Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty."— Curran from Speech 1808. 
IF FLEAS HAD BEEN UNANIMOUS 

Tf the fleas had been unanimous, and all pulled one way, they must 
have pulled me out of bed entirely." 

—Curran to his Landlady having been annoyed by fleas. 


COMMON LAW OF HUSBAND AND WIFE 

“The whole theory of the common law is a slavish one, compared 
even with the civil law. The merging of the wife’s name in that of her 
husband is emblematic of the fate of all her legal rights. The torch of 
Hymen serves but to light the pile on which those rights are offered up.” 
—Justice Nicholas Emery of Maine, 106 Me. Rep., State v. Burling- 
ham, 15 {1838- ). 



BENJ. R. CURTIS (1809-1974), Massachusetts 


THE TRIAL JUDGE 

“It has seemed to me that a far more difficult and useful field of labor, 
speaking generally, is the safe, prompt, judicious and wise controlling 
power of a Judge of the Circuit. I have no doubt that every quality 
and attainment of which a Judge is capable, may there find fullest ex¬ 
ercise and their most difficult work. I presume you will agree with me, 
that there is no field for a lawyer, which, for breadth and compass and 
the requisition made on all the faculties, can compare with a trial by 
jury; and I believe it is as true of a judge as of a lawyer, that in their 
actual application of the law to the business of men, mingled as it is with 
all passions, and motives and diversities of mind, temper, and con¬ 
dition, in the course of a trial by jury, what is most excellent in him 
comes out, and finds its fitting work, and whatever faults and weaknesses 
he has are sensibly felt.” 

— Benj. R. Curtis, in a letter to Dan'I Webster, written a month 
after he had been engaged in Circuit Court Work. 

CODIFYING THE COMMON LAW 

“The legislature imagines that the whole body of the law may now 
be reduced to a pocket volume, so that any man may carry about his own 
lawyer. It does not occur to them that a good system of law must be 
at the same time so extensive as to apply to govern all the existing re¬ 
lations between men in society; so stable and fixed, in all important 
principles, as to furnish a certain guide; and so fiexible as to be capable 
of adaptation to the ever-changing forms into which property is thrown 
by the wearied enterprise all-sharing love of gain which distinguish 
our people.”— Benjamin R. Curtis—Letter to George Ticknor, 1836. 

A LAWYER’S BUSINESS 

“A lawyer can no more regulate the amount of business he will do 
than an engineer can blow a barrel of gunpowder half-way down.” 

—Letter to his uncle—George Ticknor, 1837. 

DISSENTING OPINION IN DRED SCOTT CASE 

“I dissent, from the opinion pronounced by the Chief Justice (Roger B. 
Taney). * * * The question is, whether any person of African descent 
whose ancestors were sold as slaves in the United States, can be a citizen 
of the United States. * * * One mode of approaching this question is to 
inquire who were citizens of the United States, at the time of the adoption 
of the Constitution. Citizens of the United States at the time of the 
adoption of the Constitution can have been no other than citizens of 
the United States, under the Confederation. * * * it may safely be said 
that the citizens of the several States were citizens of the United States, 
under the Confederation. * * * To determine whether any free persons 
descended from Africans held in slavery were citizens of the United 
States, under the Confederation, and consequently at the time of the 
adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it is only necessary 
to Imow whether any such persons were citizens of the States under the 
Confederation, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. 

“Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the 
Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the State of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


207 


New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North 
Carolina, though descended from African slaves, but such of them as 
had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, 
on equal terms with other citizens. * * I shall not enter into an exam¬ 
ination of the existing opinions of that period respecting the African 
race, nor into any discussion concerning the meaning of those who as¬ 
serted in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created 
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
My own opinion is that a calm comparison of these assertions of univer¬ 
sal abstract truths and of their own individual opinions and acts, would 
not leave these men under any reproach of inconsistency; that the great 
truths they asserted on that solemn occasion they were ready and anxious 
to make effectual whenever a necessary regard to circumstances, which 
no statesman can disregard without producing more evil than good, would 
allow; and that it would not be just to them, nor true in itself, to allege 
that they intended to say the Creator of all men had endowed the white 
race exclusively with the great natural rights which the Declaration 
asserts. But this is not the place to vindicate their memory. As I con¬ 
ceive, we should deal here, with those substantial facts evinced by the 
written Constitutions of States, and by notorious practice under them. 
And they show, in a manner which no argument can obscure, that in 
some of the original thirteen States free colored persons, before and at 
the time of the foundation of the Constitution, were citizens of those 
States. Therefore, my opinion is that under the Constitution of the 
United States, every free person born on the soil of a State, who is a 
citizen of that State by force of its Constitution or laws, is also a citizen 
of the United States. 

“Eight distinct instances (of prohibiting slavery in the territories), 
beginning with the first Congress, and coming down to the year 1848, in 
which Congress has excluded slavery from the territory of the United 
States; and six distinct instances in which Congress organized and con¬ 
tinued, beginning also with the first Congress and coming down to 
1822. These acts were severally signed by seven Presidents of the United 
States, beginning with General Washington and coming regularly down 
as far as John Quincy Adams, thus including all Vv^ho were in public 
life when the Constitution was adopted. 

“In the practical construction of the Constitution, contemporaneously 
with its going into effect, by men intimately acquainted with its history 
from their personal participation in framing and adopting it, and contin¬ 
ued by them tlu’ough a long series of acts of the gravest importance, be 
entitled to weight in the judicial mind on a question of construction, 
it would seem to be difficult to resist the force of the acts above adverted to. 

“Slavery being contrary to natural right, is created only by municipal 
law. Then is it conceivable that the Constitution has conferred the right 
on every citizen to become a resident on the territory of the United States, 
with his slaves, and there to hold them as such, but has neither made 
nor provided for any municipal regulations which are essential to the 
existence of slavery? * * * Whatever theoretical importance may be 
now supposed to belong to the maintenance of such a right, I feel a 
perfect conviction that it would, if ever tried, prove to be as impracticable, 
in fact, as it is, in my judgment, monstrous in theory.” Judge Curtis 
arrived at the conclusion that the acts of Congress which had prohibited 
slavery in the territories, including the Missouri Compromise, “were 
constitutional and valid laws.” 

JUDGESHIP EASIER THAN PRACTICING LAW 

“The great difference between my professional labors at the bar 
and on the bench, consists in the entire freedom of the latter from anxiety 


208 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


and burdensome responsibility, and tbe certainty when I rise in the 
morning that no one can force me to do anything which I am not equal to.” 

# 

THE COMMON PEOPLE 

“I find nothing to rely on for our future security and peace but the 
honest instincts of the mass of the people. In them I would include those 
of education and ability—those elevated above the average intelligence 
of the country, provided they are not politicians, or members of the 
third estate; but I firmly believe that if the country for five years were 
to be effectively governed by politicians and editors, helped by specu¬ 
lative men of education and talent, it would be ruined beyond hope 
of redemption.” 

ANDREW JOHNSON 

“Johnson is a man of few ideas, but they are right and true, and he 
could suffer death sooner than yield up or violate one of them. He is 
honest, right-minded, and narrow-minded; he has no tact and even lacks 
discretion and foresight.” 

—From 'Woodbury s Life of Thaddeus Stevensf 230. 

WILL IS POWER 

“Will and not knowledge is power.” 

GREAT MEN AND DEEDS 

“The illustrious names and great deeds which centuries have gathered 
are the richest treasures of a nation The masterpieces of literature 
and art, dignify the pursuits in which they were produced.” 

—From Remarks on the Death of Daniel Webster, 1852. 

EXECUTIVE POWER 

“This power is certainly not found in any express grant of power made 
by the Constitution to the President, not even in any delegation of 
power made by the Constitution of the United States to any department 
of the government. It is claimed to be found solely in the fact that he is 
the Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, charged with the duty 
of subduing the enemy. And to this end, as he understands it, he is 
charged with the duty of subduing the enemy. And to this end, as he 
understnads it, he is charged with the duty of using, not only these great 
and ample powers which the Constitution and laws, and the self devotion 
of the people executing them, have placed in his hands, but charged 
with the duty of using powers which the people have reserved to th,e 
States, or themselves; and is permitted to break down those great con¬ 
stitutional safeguards of the partition of governmental powers, and the 
immunity of the citizen from mere executive control, which are at once 
the end and the means of free government. The necessary result of this 
interpretation of the Constitution is that, in time of war, the President 
has any and all power which he may deem it necessary to exercise to 
subdue the enemy; and that every private and personal right of individual 
security against executive control, and every right reserved to the States or 
the people, rests merely upon executive discretion. But the military 
power of the President is derived from the Constitution; and it is as suffi¬ 
ciently defined there as is his purely civil power. These are the words:— 
‘The President shall be the Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of 
the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called 
into the actual service of the United States.’ This is his military power. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


209 


He is the general-in-chief; and as such, in prosecuting war, may do 
what generals in the field are allowed to do within the sphere of their 
actual operations, in subordination to the laws of their country, from which 
alone they derive their authority. 

“When the Constitution says that the President shall be Commander- 
in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and the militia of the 
several States when called into the actual service of the United States, 
does not mean that he shall possess military power and command over 
all citizens as if enlisted in the Army or Navy or in the militia called 
into the actual service of the United States. Does it mean that he may 
make himself a legislator, and enact penal laws governing the citizens 
of the United States, and erect tribunals and create offices to enforce 
his penal edicts upon citizens ? Does it mean that he may, by a prospective 
executive decree, repeal and annul the laws of the several States, which 
respect subjects reserved by the Constitution for the Executive action 
of the States and the people? The President is the commander-in-chief 
of the Army and Navy, not only by force of the Constitution, but under 
and subject to the Constitution, and to every law enacted by its authority, 
as completely and clearly as the private in the ranks. ’ ’—In an article in 1862. 

In the above Judge Curtis argued that President Lincoln’s Proclama¬ 
tion of Emancipation was unconstitutional, because reserved to the 
States. Lincoln claimed the right because he was Commander-in- 
Chief of the Army and Navy to take any measure which might best 
subdue the enemy.— The Author. 

Benj. R. Curtis was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme 
Court (1851-1857), resigning, at age of 48, he returned to the practice. 
He had great distinction, and as great opportunities for an unhmited 
practice of the highest grade, as any man ever had in this country, 
and for 17 years maintained his place. His brother estimated that his 
total earnings for this period was $650,000—an average of about $38,000 
a year, and this in miscellaneous practice. 

Of his “Opinion-Books,” (2 folio volumes, of nearly 1,000 closely written 
pages), George Ticknor writes:—“Probably there is no similar record 
extant, concerning such a variety of subjects arising in the practice of 
an American lawyer, in which so extensive a field of jurisprudence has 
been covered by such careful and thorough discussions, uniformly based 
upon an exact statement of the case that was to be considered.” 

Judge Sam’l F. Miller used to remark that he never knew of a lawyer 
or anyone else, who had such powers of condensation as had Judge Curtis. 
He could say more in a few words than any man at the American Bar. 

Ben Butler, who was for the prosecution in the Andrew Johnson 
impeachment, and Judge Curtis was leading counsel for the defense, said: 
“After Judge Curtis had presented the case of his client, nothing more 
was said in his behalf, although in the five or six closing speeches of 
his other counsel, much else was said.” 

Daniel Webster thought he had laid the people of the nation under 
everlasting obligations to him, when he induced his appontment, and said 
he possessed the requisites of great power at the bar—clearness, fullness 
and force. 

Charles Francis Adams pronounced him “the most consummate master 
of forensic style among American lawyers of recent time .”—The Author. 

POWER OF JUDGES NOT TO BE FEARED 

“As long as the judges of the United States are obliged to express 
their opinions publicly, to give their reason for them when called upon 
in the usual mode, and to stand responsible for them, not only to public 
opinion but to a court of impeachment, I can apprehend very httle 
danger of the laws being wrested to purposes of injustice. But on the 


210 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


other hand, I do consider that this power and corresponding duty of 
the court, authoritatively to declare the law, is one of the highest 
safeguards of the citizen. The sole end of courts of justice is to enforce 
the laws uniformly and impartially, without respect of persons or times, 
or the opinions of men. To enforce popular laws is easy. But when an 
unpopular cause is a just cause, when a law, unpopular in some locality, 
is to be enforced there, then comes the strain upon the administration of 
justice; and few unprejudiced men would hesitate as to where that strain 
would be most firmly borne.” 

— Benj. R. Curtis, in Deciding U. S. vs. Morris, U. S. Circuit 

Court, 1851. 


WEBSTER’S REPLY TO HAYNE 

“The eulogium pronounced by the honorable gentleman on the character 
of the State of South Carolina, for her Revolutionary and other merits, 
meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honor¬ 
able member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished 
talent, or distinguished character. South Carolina has produced. I 
claim part of the honor; I partake in the pride of her great names. I 
claim them for countrymen, one and all, the Laurenses, the Rutledges, 
the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions—Americans all, whose fame is 
no more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism 
were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. 
In their day and generation they served and honored the country, and 
the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole 
country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears does 
he esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy 
for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of 
Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in 
his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in 
my bosom? No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank 
God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals 
to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would 
drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the 
Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happens to spring 
up beyond the little limits of my own state or neighborhood; when I 
refuse, for any such cause or for any cause, the homage of American 
talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the 
country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven, if I see extra¬ 
ordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South, and if, moved 
by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate 
the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue 
cleave to the roof of my mouth.” 



GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS (1812-1894), Massachusetts 


JEREMIAH MASON 

“Among the leading members of the Portsmouth bar whom Mr. 
Webster met there on the circuit was that extraordinary man, Jeremiah 
Mason, who was by fourteen years Mr. Webster’s senior, and who was 
the admitted head of the legal profession in New Hampshire, when Mr. 
Webster went to Portsmouth, (in 1805) as he was also one of the greatest 
lawyers that New England has ever produced. Since it was my fortune 
to have known both of these very eminent persons, to have heard them 
repeatedly at the bar and to have conversed with each of them respecting 
the other, I may, before quoting what Mr. Webster has written con¬ 
cerning Mr. Mason, express my sense of its entire justice. When Mr. 
Mason dealt with principles of the law, he handled them with such 
simplicity, and made them so lucid, and fitted them so exactly to his 
case that one could scarcely avoid believing that if on that particular 
occasion he was wrong, the law itself had always been wrong. * * * Mr. 
Webster, with whom he never had a moment’s personal difference, 
made a record in his Autobiography, which he was well aware would 
remain private while either of them lived, but which he intended should 
stand as his deliberate judgment. It was written nearly twenty years 
before Mr. Mason’s death; but it was well known that Mr. Webster 
never changed his estimate which he then carefully placed on record, as 
follows: 

“ ‘If there be in the country a stronger intellect, if there be a mind 
of more native resources, if there be a vision which sees quicker or sees 
deeper into whatever is intricate, or whatsoever is profound, I must 
confess I have not known it. I look to that individual, who if it belong 
to anybody, is entitled to be an exception. (Chief Justice Marshall is 
here meant.) But I deliberately let the judgment stand. That that 
i ndividual has much more habit of regular composition, that he has been 
disciplined and exercised in a vastly superior school, that he possesses 
even a faculty of illustration more various and more easy I think may be 
admitted. That the original reach of his mind is greater, that its grasp 
is stronger, that its logic is closer, I do not allow.” 

Geo. T. Curtis was a brother of Benjamin R. and wrote the best_ Life 
of Daniel Webster, also a Life of James Buchanan, and a Constitutional 
History of the U. S. (completed in 1896 ).—The Author. 


THE BIBLE 

JosiAH Quincy: “The great comprehensive truth, written in letters 
of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness 
has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, 
none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or 
immortal hope except in the principles of the Christian faith and in the 
sanctions of the Christian religion.” 

Burke: “True religion is the foundation of society, the basis on which 
all true government rests, and from which power derives its authority, 
laws their efficacy, and both tjieir sanction. If it is^once shaken by con¬ 
tempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable or lasting.” 



CALEB CUSHING (1800-1879), Massachusetts 

FORECAST OF WHIG DISSOLUTION 

“I pray to God, if in the decree of His Providence He have any mercy 
in store for me, not to suffer me to behold the hour of its dissolution; 
its glory extinct; the banner of its pride rent and trampled in the dust; 
its nationality a moral of history; its grandeur a lustrous vision of the 
morning slumber vanished; its liberty a disembodied spirit, brooding 
like the genius of the Past amid the prostrate monuments of the old 
magnificence. To him that shall compass or plot the dissolution of 
this Union, I would apply language resembling what I remember to have 
seen of an old anathema: Wherever fire burns or water runs; wherever 
ship fioats or land is tilled; wherever the skies vault themselves, or the 
lark carols to the dawn, or sun shines, or earth greens in his ray; wher¬ 
ever God is worshipped in temples or heard in thunder; wherever man 
is honored or woman loved —there, from thenceforth, and forever, shall 
there be to him no part or lot in the honor of man, or the love of woman. 
Ixion’s revolving wheel, the over-mantling cup at which Tantalus may not 
slake his unquenchable thirst, the insatiate vulture gnawing at the im¬ 
mortal heart of Prometheus; the rebel giants writhing in the volcanic 
fires of Aetna—are faint types of his doom.” 

—From speech in House of Representatives, in 1836, while Cushing 
was a Whig: Forney's Anecdotes, etc., 230. 

HIS VERSATILITY 

“I have heard him (Cushing) at a dinner-table conversing in French, 
Spanish, English, and German.”— Forney—in his ''Anecdotes,' 229. 

SOME OF HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS 

“As a newspaper writer he is unsurpassed. * * * He was at home on 
finance, on law, and especially on foreign questions. In society, he is 
delightful —excelhng in conversation, his reminiscences are original and 
graphic. A man of large wealth, inherited and self-earned, a widower 
without children, fond of labor, of matchless excellence as a practitioner 
in the Supreme Court of the U. S. He is also a great student—devouring 
every book as it comes out, novels inclusive, and remembering every¬ 
thing he reads. ^ His health is good, his activity remarkable, his habits 
temperate. Invited everywhere in Washington, he is the ornament of 
every circle, and it is not going too far to say that gracious, polite, and 
agreeable to all educated Englishmen are—especially those reared 
in high life—among his ancestors in the Geneva mission. (He was one 
of three chosen by President Grant as counsel in the Geneva Arbitration, 
—Cushing, Evarts and Waite), he will be one of the most popular.” 
—1 Forney's ^Anecdotes,' 229. 

NOMINATED CHIEF JUSTICE, 1873 

“He was nominated by President Grant for Chief Justice of the United 
States Supreme Court, upon the death of S. P. Chase, but was not con¬ 
firmed, because Cushing had been liberal in politics, a friend of Franklin 
Pierce and Jefferson Davis.”— 2 Forney s 'Anecdotes' 228. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


213 


INCOME IN 1873 

“It is said that Mr. Cushing is now (1873) receiving more money for 
legal services than any man in his profession.”— 1 Forney's Anecdotes, 21. 

EARLY READING 

“When a young lawyer in Newburyport, Mass., Cushing made an 
arrangement with the leading bookseller of the place to take all his 
new books at 9 o’clock in the evening and return them at 8 o’clock the 
next morning. In that time usually devoted to rest, he would gain a 
clear idea of their contents, and his wonderful memory always retained 
what he had once read.”— April, 1892, Green Bag, 24. 

READ MASSACHUSETTS SUPREME COURT REPORTS IN 19 

DAYS 

“In 1852, he was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of Massa¬ 
chusetts. To prepare himself he read in nineteen days the 57 volumes of 
the Mass. Reports—all that were out at that time.” 

—January , 1892, Green Bag, 3. 

A MODEL OPINION 


As a model of what an opinion may be in soundness of law, and clear¬ 
ness and grace of expression, see Popkin, et al. v. Sargent, et al., 10 Cush., 
327. 

OFFICE HELD 

Born in 1800, a Harvard graduate of 1817; member of Congress, 1835- 
1843; U. S. Commissioner to China, 1843-5; Judge of Massachusetts 
Supreme Court, 1852; Attorney-General of the United States, 1853-1857, 
U. S. Minister to Spain, 1874-7. 

GREAT LINGUIST 


“He spoke French, Spanish and other modern languages, and was said 
to be able to converse with all foreign ministers at Washington in their own 
tongue. It is said that even in China, he translated his official business 
without the aid of an interpreter. Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the 
Treasury, under Lincoln, Johnson, and Arthur, in his very interesting 
volume—‘Men and Measures of Half a Century,’ in giving his im¬ 
pression of Edward Everett, says: ‘He (Everett) was, perhaps, the finest 
scholar in the classics of the day, the greatest linguist that ever went 
to Congress, except Caleb Cushing. It was said of Mr. Cushing that he 
could translate the European languages. While in Congress, there 
came to the State Department a document that no one could interpret. 
Upon the suggestion of some one who had heard of Mr. Cushing’s 
reputation as a linguist, it was sent to him. He translated it without 
difficulty. Mr. Cushing was an effective and ready speaker, and a very 
able and learned lawyer. He was one of the few men whose voice could 
be heard in the old House of Representatives, and who never spoke 
without commanding the attention of the members.” 

— January, 1892, Green Bag, 10. 

HIS INDUSTRY 

“Thomas H. Benton once said that he thought himself the most 
industrious man he had ever known in public life with the exception of 
John Quincy Adams. Yet, neither of these men was more industrious 
than Caleb Cushing. ‘His house in Newburyport was never passed by 


214 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


me at night, when he was at home, be it ever so late,’ says William C. 
Todd, ‘that I did not see a light in his room; and it was known to be his 
his habit to work until after midnight, then throw himself on a lounge for 
a few hours’ rest, and at daylight resume his labor,’ He sought knowledge 
from every source and was an omniverous reader. When Webster’s 
Unabridged Dictionary first appeared, he read it all through, word by 
word, and corrected its mistakes.”—Jaw., 1893, Green Bag, 10. 

GREAT INTELLECTUAL LAWYER 

‘‘Caleb Cushing was the ablest international lawyer of this country, 
and he had the reputation in Europe of being the ablest in any country.” 

— Benj. F. Butler—in ^His Book,' 318. 

U. S. ATTORNEY-GENERAL UNDER PIERCE. 

‘‘He was appropriately selected for attorney-general by President 
Pierce, in 1853. In conjunction with Jefferson Davis, he was con¬ 
sidered to be the guiding and controlling force in the administration. 
His thorough education, his remarkable attainments, his eminence in 
the law, his ability as an advocate, rendered his active co-operation of 
great value to the pro-slavery Democrats of the South.” 

—1 Blaine's 20 Years of Congress, 159. 

PRESIDENT PIERCE’S ESTIMATE 

“President Pierce told his most intimate friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne 
(years after Cushing’s espousel of John Tyler’s administration) that 
Caleb Cushing had such mental variety and activity that he could not, if 
left to himself, keep hold of one view of things, but needed the influence 
of a more stable judgment to keep him from divergency. His fickle¬ 
ness was intellectual, not moral.”— 2 Perley's Rem., 276. 

KNOWLEDGE,—VAST AND VARIOUS 

“His knowledge was vast and various, and his style, tempered by 
foreign travel, was classical. He had mastered liistory, politics, law, 
jurisprudence, moral science, and almost every other branch of knowledge, 
which enabled him to display an erudition as marvelous in amount as it 
was varied in kind.”— 2 Perley's Rem., 277. 

SIDNEY WILLARD’S OPINION 

Sidney Willard, Professor of Latin, Hebrew and other oriental languages 
for nearly twenty-five years, said that Caleb Cushing and Albert H. 
Nelson were men of the best natural ability that he had ever had among 
all his pupils at college. 

— Willard's ‘Half a Century with Judges and Lawyers,' 69. 
THOS. H. BENTON ON CUSHING 

“Of all these (members of Pierce’s cabinet) the attorney-general 
(Cushing) is the master spirit. He is a man of talent, of learning, of 
industry—unscrupulous, double-sexed, double-gendered, and herma¬ 
phroditic, in politics, with hinges in his knee, which he often crooks, 
that thrift may foUow fawning. He governs his subserviency; and to him 
is deferred the mater’s place in Mr. Pierce’s cabinet. When I heard that 
he was to come into the cabinet I set down Mr. Pierce for a doomed man, 
and foresaw the swift and dull destruction which was to fall upon him.” 

—1 Rhodes' History of the U. S., 397. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


215 


JAMES FORD RHODES’ ESTIMATE 

“Cushing was one of those men who seem to have taken all knowledge 
for their province. Scholar, author, lawyer, statesman, diplomatist, 
general, judge, in at least four of these callings he achieved distinction. 
* * * He was one of the most indefatigable workers. While well versed in 
the modern languages, he could also speak fluently several modern 
languages, and it was noted that at diplomatic dinners, while the Sec¬ 
retary of State (Wm. L. Marcy) could converse only in his own tongue, 
the Attorney-General carried on conversation with all the ambassadors 
in their proper languages. Thoroughly acquainted with the best English 
literature, he yet read every book, and remembered what he read.’’ 

—1 Rhodes' History of the U. S., 391-2. 

JAMES SCHOULER ON CUSHING 

“The third selection for Chief Justice by President Grant (after Roscoe 
Conkling, of New York and George H. Williams, of Oregon) was stranger 
still in point of actual fitness—that of Caleb Cushing. Of professional 
skill, intellect, learning and experience, Cushing had abundance, but 
both politically and for the weight of years, he belonged to the past. 
And more immediately in his disfavor was a serious doubt broadcast 
of his probity and moral principle, for Washington knew him intimately 
as a resident. Grant was saved another rebuff from the Senate, by the 
production to that body of a letter, the versatile Cushing had written 
to his ‘dear friend’ Jefferson Davis, in March 1861, asking a personal 
favor; and with that letter assigned, as a sufficient basis of objection 
Repul3lican Senators asked the President to withdraw the nomination, 
which he did at once.’’—7 Schouler’s U. S. Hist., 230-1. 

Schouler further says:— 

“A man of untiring industry and brilliant accomplishments of a versa¬ 
tile character, as lawyer, legislator, diplomatist and occasional writer, and 
moreover, as one of the very few officers from New England who ever led 
volunteer soldiers to the Mexican War^—Cushing had figured for nearly 
half a century in the public gaze, in one capacity or another, and did 
much excellent service. But he skirted on the edge of parties and was 
throughout more the counsellor of statesmen than a statesman himself; 
his convictions went largely by his retainers; and in the course of a long 
life he made more political enemies than friends and kept scarcely an 
intimacy.’’—7 Schouler's U. S. Hist., 276. 

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 

“Yours is not the gauntleted hand of the soldier, nor yours the voice 
which commands armies, rules cabinets, or leads senates; but though 
you are none of these, yet you are backed by all of them. Theirs is the 
external power which sustains your moral authority; you are the incarnate 
mind of the political body of the nation. In the complex institutions of 
our country you are the pivot point upon which the rights and liberties 
of all, government and people alike turn; or, rather, you are the central 
light of constitutional wisdom around which they perpetually revolve. 
Long may this Court retain the confidence of our country as the greatest 
conservators, not of the private peace only, but of the sanctity and 
integrity of the Constitution.” 

—Remarks by Cushing, upon retiring as Attorney-General of the 
U. S., March J, 1857: 2 Nicolay and Hays' Lincoln, 70 {Also 
'National Intelligencer, March 5, 1857). 


216 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


MATT H. CARPENTER 

“I do love to watch the entry of that man into court; he comes in with 
such a sunshiny smile, such a boyish indifference of step, and such a 
roguish twinkle of the eyes, as seems to say, ‘Now listen while I have some 
sport with these old codgers’.”— Caleb Cushing. 

HUGH McCulloch on cushing 

“Mr. Edward Everett was perhaps the finest classical scholar of his 
day, the greatest linguist that ever sat in Congress, except Caleb Cushing. 
It was said of Mr. Cushing, that he could translate all the European 
languages; that while in Congress there came to the State Department 
a document that no one in that department could interpret. Upon 
the suggestion of some one who had heard of Mr. Cushing’s reputation 
as a linguist, it was sent to him, and he translated it without difficulty.” 
Mr Cushing was a ready and effective speaker, and^ a very able and 
learned lawyer. He was one of the few men, whose voice could be heard 
in the chamber of the old House of Representatives, and who never 
spoke without commanding the attention of the members. He lacked 
only one thing the possession of which would have made him one of the 
most distinguished men of his time.” 

— McCulloch's Men and Measures," 21^. 


ATTORNEYS CREATED OUT OF NOTHING 

“We do not impeach the omnipotence of the Legislature for creating 
attorneys, as the world was created, out of nothing; or the power to 
control such eccentric orbs within their appropriate spheres. Our province 
is rather to ascertain their orbits, and to harmonize their motions, if 
possible, with the movements of other bodies.” 

—Judge Jonas Cutting of Maine, in Simmons v. Jacobs, 52 Maine, 
156 (1862). 


THE BIBLE 

Selden: “I have taken much pains to know everything that is 
esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but Avith all my reading, nothing 
now remains to comfort me at the close of this life but this passage of 
St. Paul: ‘It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.’ To this I cleave, and 
herein do I find rest.” 

P. Henry: “I have now disposed of all my property to my family. 
There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian 
religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they 
would have been rich, and if they had not that, and I had given them 
all the world, they would be poor.” 




RICHARD HENRY DANA, Jr., (1815-1882), Massachusetts 


LIABILITIES OF NEUTRALS TO A BLOCKADE 

“The government is carrying on a war. It is exerting all the powers of 
war. Yet the claimants of the captured vessels not only seek to save 
their vessels by denying that they are liable to capture, but deny the 
right of the government to exercise war powers—deny that this can be, 
in point of law, a war. So the Judiciary is actually, after the war of 
twenty-three months’ duration, to decide whether the government has 
the legal capacity to exert these war powers. * * * Contemplate, my 
dear sir, the possibility of the Supreme Court deciding that this blockade 
is illegal! What a position it would put us in before the world, whose 
cornmerce we have been illegally prohibiting, whom we have unlawfully 
subjected to a cotton famine, and domestic dangers and distress for two 
years! It would end the war, and where it would leave us with neutral 
powers, it is fearful to contemplate! Yet such an event is legally possible 
—I do not think it probable, hardly possible, in fact. But last year 
I think there was danger of such a result when the blockade was new, 
and before the three judges were appointed.” 

—Richard Henry Dana, Jr., in the Prize Cases, 2 Black, 635, 1865. 

Mr. Dana was educated at Harvard. To cure himself of eye trouble, 
he shipped as a common sailor to the Pacific Coast, and later published 
an account of the same in “Two Years Before the Mast.”(1840). 

DANA ON CHOATE’S FERTILITY 

Mr. Dana, in replying to Choate, truly said, in the Dalton divorce 
Case, alluding to Colburn (a witness whom Choate denounced), that the 
victim who had been smitten by the bolt of Choate’s denunciation was 
lost; he might go to the East or to the West, in his endeavors to reform, 
but that tremendous invective would always blacken before him, 
and his reputation would track him with the fatal footsteps of Nemesis.” 
— Parker's ‘^Reminiscences", of R. Choate, Jf.78-9. 

REMARKS UPON THE DEATH OF RUFUS CHOATE 

“The ‘golden bowl is broken,’ the age of miracles has passed, the day 
of inspiration is over; the great conquerer, unseen and irresistable, has 
broken into our temple, and has carried off the vessels of gold, the ves¬ 
sels of silver, the precious stones, the jewels, and the ivory; and like the 
priests at the temple of Jersualem, after the invasion from Babylon, 
we must content ourselves with serving vessels of wood, and stone, and 
of iron.” 

— Mr. Dana's Remarks before members of the Suffolk Bar, Boston, 
upon Mr. Choate's Death. 


A BAD LAW 

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.” 
— Lincoln. 



JOHN W. DANIEL (1842-1910), Virginia 


WASHINGTON 

“Alone in its grandeur stands forth the character of Washington in 
history; alone like some peak that has no fellow in the mountain range 
of greatness. Borne upon the bosom of that river which mirrors Capitol 
dome, and monumental shaft in its seaward flow, the river itself seems 
to reverse its current and bear us silently into the past. Scarce has the 
vista of the city faded from our gaze when we behold on the woodland 
height that swells above the waters, amidst walks and groves and gardens, 
the white porch of the old colonial plantation home which has become the 
shrine of many a pilgrimage. * * * We stand under the great trees 

and watch the solemn river, in its never ceasing flow, we gaze upon the 
simple tomb silence is unbroken save by the low murmur of the waters, 
or the wild bird’s note, and we are enveloped in an atmosphere of moral 
grandeur which no pageantry of moving men nor splendid pile can gen¬ 
erate. Nightly on the plain of Marathon the Greeks have the tradition, 
that there yet may be heard the neighing of charges and the rushing 
shadows of spectral war. In the spell that broods over the sacred groves 
of Vernon, Patriotism, Honor, Courage, Justice, Virtue, Truth, seem 
bodied forth—the only imperishable realities of man’s being. * * * 

“Fascinated by the perfection of the man, we are loath to break the 
mirror of admiration into the judgment of analysis. But, lo, as we 
attempt it, every fragment becomes the miniature of such sublimity and 
beauty, that the destroying hand can only multiply the forms of immor¬ 
tality. * * * 

“Brilliant I will not call Washington, if the brightness of the rippling 
river exceed the solemn glory of old ocean. Brilliant I will not call him, 
if darkness must be visiWe in order to display light; but he had none of 
that rocket-like brilliancy which flames in instant corruscation across 
the black brow of night, and then is not. But if a steady, unflickering 
flame, slow rising to its lofty sphere, high hung in the Heavens of contem¬ 
plation, dispensing far and wide its rays, revealing all things on which it 
shines in due proportions and large relations, making Right, Duty and 
Destiny so plain that in the vision we are scarce conscious of the light, 
if this be brilliancy, then the genius of Washington was as full-orbed 
and luminous as the god of day in his zenith.’’— Dedication Oration of 
Washington Nafl Monument, Feb. 21, 1885. 

GEORGE F. HOAR ON DANIEL 

“John W. Daniel had been known as a very eminent lawyer at the 
Virginia Bar, author of two excellent law books. I had great respect for 
his intellectual qualities.”— 2 Hoar's ^Autobiography of 70 years,' 181^. 


CROSS-EXAMINATION 

“A lawyer should never ask a witness on cross-examination a question 
unless in the first place he knew what the answer should be, or in the second 
place he didn’t care.”— David Graham, N. Y. {1808-1852). 



CLARENCE DARROW, Illinois 

THE CHRISTIAN NOT THE ONLY RELIGION 


“Now, gentlemen, like Brother Hawley and Brother Richardson and 
Senator Borah, I, too, have a profound regard for religion. Mine may 
be the broader. I don’t want to say to th^se twelve men that I think 
the Christian religion is the only religion that the world has ever known. 
I don’t believe it for a moment. I have the greatest respect for any 
religion or any code of ethics that does anything to help man, whatever 
that religion may be. And for the black man who looks into the black 
face of a wooden idol and prays to that idol to make him a better man, 
I have the profoundest respect. I know that there is in him, when he 
addresses his prayers to his wooden idol, the same holy sentiment and the 
same feeling that there is in the breast of a Christian when he raises his 
prayer to the Christian’s God. It is all a piece of ethics and a higher 
life, and no man could have more respect for it than I have. In the ways 
of the world and in the language of the world I am not a professed Chris¬ 
tian. I do not pretend to be. I have my doubts about things which to 
other men’s minds seem plain. I look out on the great universe around me, 
at the millions and millions of stars that dot the firmament of heaven 
in the night-time; I look out on all the mysteries of nature and the 
mysteries of life, and I ask myself the solution of the riddle, and I bow 
my head in the presence of the infinite mystery and say: T don’t know.’ 
I cannot tell. But for that man who understands it all and sees in it 
the work of a Supreme Being, who prays to what he honestly believes 
to be this Higher Power, I have the profoundest regard; and my commun¬ 
ion of that poor, weak mortal with that Higher Power, which permeates 
the universe and which makes for good, and communion that lifts a man 
higher and higher and makes him better, I have regard for that. * ♦ * 

I have never asked for a human being’s life and I hope that I may never 
ask for a human life, to the end of my days. I do not ask for his (Orc¬ 
hard’s). If the time should ever come when somebody pronounced against 
him the decree of death and nobody else would ask to save his life, my 
petition would be there to save it. I don’t believe in man’s tinkering 
with the work of God. I don’t believe that you and I can say in the light 
of heaven that, if we had been born as he was born, if our brains had 
been molded as his was molded, if we had been surrounded as he has 
been surrounded, we might not have been like him.” 

—Clarence Darrow, of Chicago, in Defense of fVm. D. Haywood, 
for the murder of ex-Governor Frank Steuenberg, of Idaho, on the 
night of Dec. 30, '06. For W. E. Borah's Reply to the above. See 
Borah. 


ON MAINTAINING THE NORTH 

“If war must come, if the bayonet must be used to maintain the Con¬ 
stitution I can say before God my conscience is clear. I have struggled 
long for a peaceful solution of this trouble. I deprecate war, but if it 
must come I am with my country in every contingency and under all 
circumstances. At all hazzards our government must be maintained, 
and the shortest pathway to peace is through the most stupendous 
preparation for war.” 

—Stephen A. Douglas's speech before the legislature, at Springfield, 
111., Apr. 25, 1861. ^‘One of the most powerful speeches ever listened 
to from the lips of man," said a listener. 




MATTHEW P. DEADY (1824-1893), Oregon 

A SPECTACLE—NOT A “DRAMATIC COMPOSITION” 

“But if this play (‘Black Crook’) is a ‘Dramatic composition,’ within 
the purpose and meaning of the act of Congress, the motion of the claim¬ 
ants for an injunction should be allowed. 

“But I do not think it such a composition, it is a mere spectacle. 
The dialogue is very scant and meaningless, and appears to be a mere 
accessory to the action of the piece; a sort of verbal machinery tacked 
on to a succession of ballet and tableaux. The principal part and attrac¬ 
tion of the spectacle seems to be the exhibition of women in novel dress, 
or no dress, and in attractive attitudes of action. To call such a spectacle 
a ‘dramatic composition’ is an abuse of language, and an insult to the 
genius of the English drama. A menagerie of wild beasts, or an exhibi¬ 
tion of model artistes, might justly be called a dramatic composition. 
Like those, this is a spectacle, and altho it may be an attractive or a gor¬ 
geous one, it is nothing more. In my judgment, an exhibition of women 
‘lying about loose,’ or otherwise, is not a dramatic composition, and there¬ 
fore, not entitled to the protection of the copyright act, and the relief 
sought for is denied.” 

— The above decision was made by Judge Deady, in Martinetti 
V. Maguire, 1 Deady, 216. 

Deady was admitted to the bar in Ohio; reached Oregon in ’49, ap¬ 
pointed by the President of the U. S. in 1855 a judge of territorial 
Supreme Court, and served until Oregon was admitted as a State, in 1859, 
appointed by President Buchanan, U. S. District Judge for the District of 
Oregon, in 1859, and held the office until his death in 1893—34 years. 

MOB-LAW DISCOURAGED 

“Much has been said to you in this connection by the leading counsel 
for the defendants, in extenuation, if not in justification, of vigilance 
and citizens’ committees and it is maintained that there are times when 
the people of a place are justified in taking the law into their own hands, 
and administering justice in obedience to the methods of a higher law 
than that found in the books. But, gentlemen, we are here as ministers 
of the law of the land, and we do not know or recognize any other. We 
have taken a solemn oath to administer this law and be governed by 
it in the determination of this case. When we loose our hold on this 
storm-tried anchor we are adrift, without rudder or compass, on the 
dangerous sea of prejudice, passion and falsehood.” 

—In Boyle v. Case, 18 Federal Reporter, 880. From Judge Deady's 
charge to the jury, in an action for damages brought by the victim of 
a vigilance committee. 

DEADY’S THEORY OF GOVERNMENT 

“By the time I was thirty years of age, I had pretty thoroughly studied 
the Constitution and political history of the United States for myself. 
Among others, I had read Jefferson’s Works, Webster’s and Calhoun’s 
speeches, Washington’s Messages, Hamilton’s Works, and the report 
of Burr’s trial and Chase’s impeachment, and Marshall’s life of Washing¬ 
ton, and became on general principles what might be called a federalist—a 
believer in the doctrine that the Constitution created a government for 
a nation, supreme in its sphere, and the ultimate judge of its own powers, 
and not a mere compact between independent and sovereign states, to 
be terminated at the will or pleasure of either of them.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


221 


WHAT A CONSTITUTION SHOULD BE 

“This work of our constitution builders has survived for more than 
four decades, in all its original symmetry and vigor. Iconoclasts arise 
who tell us that it was well enough for the day of small things, but that 
we have outgrown it; that it is inadequate to our present needs, and others 
who would conform it to their honest yet vague and visionary aspirings 
for they know not what. In many of the American states we have 
witnessed these mutations of the organic law, largely symptomatic of 
a grave distrust of parliamentary government. As I have said elsewhere: 
‘A constitution properly should contain but few specifications; among 
a free people, who have earned their freedom, a people who are able to 
maintain and are worthy of liberty, the fewer the better. A designation 
of the departments of the Government, a bill of rights, a recognition of 
Magna Charta, the petition of right, trial by jury, habeas corpus, a 
specification of the duties of these departments, a few checks; this should 
suffice. Every step beyond this is an encroachment upon the rights of 
the people, is an arraignment of the people themselves, is a questioning 
of their right, or, at least capacity, for self government.’ 

“And I might have added that this is none the less true that it is 
accomplished by a species of political felo de se affecting as well a blame¬ 
less posterity. If the many restrictions placed in recent years upon the 
different departments of the state government by their new constitu¬ 
tions are needed, they stand forth as terrible indictments of the servants 
of the people, of the people themselves. 

“If these checks are really needed, then has virtue departed from the 
land. Corporate lust cannot corrupt a people worthy to govern itself. 
No such bugbear as that is needed to justify these constitutions. 
If, like the later Roman-republic, we are corrupt to the core, fitted only 
for Caesar, if we are rotten before we are ripe, indeed is destruction 
inevitable, and no hand, no check, may stay the rapid descent. 

“But I believe these later constitutions are mistakes in attempting 
to deal minutely with so many varied interests and our people, with the 
good sense which is so peculiar to the American, will ultimately recognize 
this.” 

—Largely the Father of the Oregon Constitution, and which stood 
for nearly 50 years without an amendment. 


LORD JOHN CAMPBELL’S ESTIMATE OF LORD MANSFIELD 

“Lord Mansfield must, I think, be considered the most prominent 
legal character and the brightest ornament to the profession of the law, 
that appeared in England during the last century. ^ As an advocate, 
he did not display the impassioned eloquence of Erskine, but he was for 
many years the first man at the bar among powerful competitors. * * * 
Of his tlu'ee successors, Kenyon, Ellenborough and Tenterden, the first 
affected a knowledge of nothing beyond law, except a few Latin quotations, 
which he constantly misapphed; the second, though a scholar, and a 
ripe and good one, was only a few months in the House of Commons, 
during which he did nothing beyond bringing in a law bill—and in the 
House of Lords, he rather alarmed the Peers by violent ebullitions of 
indignation, then charmed or convinced them by polished reasoning; 
the last, having devoted all his best years to the drawing of special pleas, 
never was a member of the House of Coramons and the few times he 
addressed the Lords he seemed to be opening to the jury the issues on 
some very complicated record.”— 2 Lives of the Chief Justices, ^70-2.' 



OLIVER H. DEAN (1845- ), Missouri 


THE PHILOSOPHY OP OUR GOVERNMENT 

“The philosophy of our governmental institutions necessarily is that 
no individual can in the affairs of life succeed without benefiting his 
fellowmen. If a man is a great artist, poet, writer, educator, surgeon, 
physician, inventor, or scientist, his work must result for the benefit 
of humanity. If a man is a successful farmer, it is because he cultivates 
his fields intelligently for the benefit of his fellowmen, who will consume 
what they bring forth. If he is a successful manufacturer and establishes 
great industries, he does it only because he manufactures something the 
public highly needs. If a successful merchant, he buys wisely and sells 
better goods at a more satisfactory price to his patrons—^goods needed 
to satisfy the wants or tastes of the people. If a railroad is built, a gas 
or electric light plant is established, or telephone or telegraph lines are 
constructed across the country, our ships are built to navigate our 
lakes or seas, or boats our rivers, all by private enterprise, it is because 
there is need for them, and the public is benefited by them. If great 
financial institutions arise, they are based upon the prosperity of our 
country and are a necessary part of its growth. It follows that every 
kind of work, business enterprise, profession and pursuit, is administered 
to meet a public want, and if that want does not exist in any of these 
things there can be no success in it. It follows, then, too, that in the final 
analysis, all that society gets for its own uses and benefit, it gets almost 
wholly through the private administration of private affairs for the social 
good. It follows, too, that the individual who honestly works with the 
greatest industry and who brings to that work the highest intelligence or 
even genius in the end, is performing the highest and best work for so¬ 
ciety as its chief beneficiary.” 

—From the ^Law of the Land' delivered Apr., 191Jf, before the law 

department of the University of Mo. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 

“The American republic, vast as it is, has demonst ated that its main¬ 
tenance in all its integrity is as important to the people of the Pacific 
states as it is to the Atlantic states, or the Gulf states, or as it is to the 
middle or Lake states. It has demonstrated that the people of Alaska, 
Arizona, and other territories, colonies, if you please, which have not 
yet attained statehood, are as highly concerned in the permanence of 
the federal government over all as are the states themselves. That 
distances of seve al thousand miles from one part of our republic to the 
other do not diminish, but enhance, the value of the federal union. 
Differences in soil, climate, and' products in one part add strength, 
wealth, and independence to every other part. Out of these differences 
have grown enormous internal commerce that binds the states together. 
Our history has demonstrated that our scheme of government, so wisely 
planned, and yet so simply planned, which gives to the central authority 
control over those things only which are of national concern, is adapted 
not only to our continent composed of states and territories, but that it 
possesses within itself the quality of indefinite expansion over other 
peoples which are fitted for republican government, such as were never 
exhibited in_ any other form of government. Even the commonwealth 
of Australia is no further from Washington in these days of cable, telegraph 
and steamships than Indiana and Illinois were from our national capitol 
in their early history. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


223 


“It is always unsafe to prophesy. But, if England should lose control 
of her great English-speaking colonies, the question arises under what 
constitution and under what flag would they find equal rights, equal 
protection, and equal advantages to those which they would acquire 
under the American constitution and the American flag? Who shall 
affirm, who shall deny, that the lofty prophecy of Jefferson may not yet 
And fulfillment, when he declared that ‘the farthest star in the heavens 
shall bear the name of Washington, and the city he founded shall be the 
capital of the Universal republic.’ ” 

—'The Making of the Constitution,' delivered before the Illinois 
Bar Ass'n., Peoria, III., June, 1909. 

THE BASIC PRINCIPLE 

“Our institutions have endowed opportunity. They have created 
individual responsibility. They have aroused individual ambitions to 
the highest efforts. They have urged and sustained those who have 
exhibited ordinary efforts and who under preceding conditions of society 
would have made no effort and would have been the mere servants and 
toilers of the few. They proclaim to each: ‘Your brain and brawn are 
yours to make the most of, by yourself and for yourself. The result 
of your intelligence and labors belong o you and yours and not to some¬ 
body else. You are free and self-respecting men and the more you ac¬ 
complish as units of society, the more you accomplish for society as a 
whole.’ This is the philosophy of our political institutions. This is the 
underlying theory and it is the only true theory. 

“To this end we have established for the betterment of mankind on 
this American soil, and to all who may in the future reside here, a govern¬ 
ment which shall perform governmental offices, and which will not under¬ 
take the work the individual should perform. It will not invade his 
province and take away from him the work that belongs to him to do. 

“We are entitled to liberty in divine things. Still more are we entitled 
to liberty in human things. If a man should be permitted to think freely 
and act freely in the matters which should pertain to his soul’s salvation, 
he should be permitted to think freely in the matters which pertain to his 
earthly welfare. If he is capable of determining those matters which 
pertain to his religion he should also be permitted to determine those 
things which concern the ordinary affairs of life. 

“There are things which are necessarily governmental, but they are 
relatively few. The great work of our law is and should be confined to 
the regulation and protection of private rights. The regulations to that 
end will necessarily become more numerous as the work of the individual 
members of society multiplies and extends; but those regulations should 
not be established at the expense or in derogation of the controlling 
principle of individual liberty.” 

Oliver H. Dean, of the Kansas City, Mo., Bar, and President of the 
Kansas City School of Law, has a fondness in the intervals of an active 
practice to speak and write on great constitutional questions and princi¬ 
ples. The above is from his discourse on the ‘Basic Principle’ delivered by 
him to the law students of the University of Michigan, June, 1916. 

— The Author. 


DELPHIN MICHAEL DELMAS (1844- ), California 

DENUNCIATION OF STANFORD WHITE 

“If you have been near death, you know that at such a time the mind 
travels with the rapidity of lightning. The mind goes back over the past 
like lightning. Then Thaw, as he looked upon the hideous form of this 
man, saw the whole panorama of White’s Life. He saw him making 
his way into the family where poverty dwelt; saw him laying bare his 
plans to ingratiate himself; saw him giving the mother money to absent 
herself from the city that he might perpetrate the deed of shame he had 
planned; saw him inflaming her youthful imagination; plying her with 
wine; saw her mind wandering under the fatal drug; saw her losing 
consciousness; saw her in her shame; saw him next day kissing the hem 
of her dress, heard his thousand protestations of love; heard her re¬ 
fusing, and saw that chamber in Paris where she told him the story of 
her wrongs; heard again his many proposals to her; saw that terrible 
night when she had told him her story; saw himself as he walked the floor 
and cried: ‘O God O God!’ saw her return to New York; saw her meet 
this man who had wronged her; saw her about to fall into this villain’s 
hands, and saw himself rescue her from this man. He saw himself again 
at the altar marrying her; saw her when her mind was poisoned against 
him by the same man who had ruined her; saw her rescued from the man; 
went over the happy months he had lived with her in his mother’s house; 
saw this monster and he heard his words, T will get her back,’ and he 
knew not, he reasoned not, he struck as does the tigress to protect her 
home—struck for the purity of American homes—struck for the purity 
of American maidens-^struck for the purity of American wives. He 
struck, and who shall say he was not right? He had appealed to the 
Pinkertons, to the district attorney, and that night he appealed to God, 
and God that night answered that cry—the cry of the fatherless child. 
And God then redeemed the promise He had made thousands of years 
ago when He said He would hear the cries of the afflicted and that He 
would make the wives of the oppressors widows and their children orphans.’’ 
—Delphin M. Delmas, then of California, later of N. Y. Defense 
of Harry K. Thaw, for the Murder of Standford White, Feh. k-, 1907. 
{Jerome prosecuted, and the jury was unable to agree, and a mistrial 
was declared). 

Mr. Delmas was born in France, Apr. 14, 1844, son of Antoine and 
Coralie Delmas, removed to California in boyhood; A.B. Santa Clara 
CoUege, 1862—A.M., 1863—Ph.D., 1903; LL.B., Yale, 1865; married 
Pauline Hodge, of San Francisco, Apr. 7, 1869; admitted to California 
Bar, 1866; practiced in Ban Jose, California, 1866-1883; San Francisco, 
until 1883, and later in New York City, going to latter city in spring of 
1907 to defend Harry Thaw, in which case he introduced the now 
famous plea of ‘Dementia Americana.’ The jury disagreed. He was 
criticised by his associate counsel, John B. Gleson, for using this de¬ 
fense. He formed a partnership in New York, known as Delmas, 
Towne and Spellman, and remained in that city for about four years. 
He is now practicing his profession in Los Angeles, California, and lives 
in Santa Monica, that State. 

He was district attorney for Santa Clara Co., California, 1868; regent 
of the University of California 1885; delegate at large to the Democratic 
National Convention, at St. Louis Missouri, 1904; is a Catholic, Demo¬ 
crat; belongs to the Paciflc and Union Clubs. He has published 
‘Speeches and Addresses,’ 1901.) 


THOMAS. DENMAN (1779-1854), England 

SHAKESPEARE 

“A few simple facts record the praise of Shakespeare: thp insatiable 
demand for his works, the swarming theatres which find them ever new 
and delightful, real histrionic genius aims at embodying his conceptions, 
while it disdains to receive its task from any meaner hand. His power 
is manifested in tears and smiles, in agony and raptures, on its first dis¬ 
play to the sensibility of youth; in the tranquil delight, on its hundredth 
repetition, of reflecting age; in the permanency imparted to our language 
by the richness, the strength, the ever varying graces of his style; in the 
gentle, yet generous spirit, the sympathy with all the kindly affections, the 
high feelings of magnaminity and honor, by which he has produced a 
lasting effect on the character of Englishmen.”— Thomas Denman. 

STOCKDALE v. HANSARD 

“The principle is that no one branch of the legislature, acting separately 
and alone, can, by any so called privilege, alter, suspend, or supersede 
the established laws of the land, so as to prevent the subject from resorting 
to any remedy or enforcing any right which those laws have provided 
for or conferred on them.”— Thomas Denman, in Stockdale v. Hansard. 

CALUMNY 

“Calumny is a strong word, but I do not complain of it, for I perceive 
the sense in which it is used by its writer. The calumny is not that I 
stated anything untruly, but that I made strong observations on the 
evidence of a person who stated himself to have once been a slave trader. 
If I had incorrectly charged Dr. Cliffe with being a slave trader, I should 
plead guilty to uttering the worst of calumnies; but he himself con¬ 
fesses that he has been a slave trader, the character affixed to that crime 
is not affixed by me, but by the law. The law of England proclaims 
him, as long and inasmuch as he was a slave trader, to have been a pirate, 
a robber, and a felon. So do the public acts of the Brazilian empire, 
where he was domiciled.” 

—Lord Thomas Denman—House of Commons, on ^Slave Trade,' 
18J^8. 

SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 

“For nothing can so effectually contribute to our prosperity and honor 
as the emulous advancement of our sons in the career of science and 
literature. I trust that my zeal in some degree may supply what is want¬ 
ing in ability; and I can offer at least my testimony as a witness, speaking 
from experience and observation, to the value of literary pursuits as a 
means of happiness. They are in truth, in the language of that lesson 
imbibed in my early years, ‘The nourishment of youth, the delight 
of age, the refuge and consolation of adversity, the companions of 
our weary travels, of our rural solitudes, of our sleepless nights.’ 
These words were uttered near two thousand years ago by the great 
statesman and orator of Rome (Cicero), who in those characters performed 
but a fleeting service to his own country, while as a philosopher and a 
man, he has conferred on all mankind which must be f^t while the 
world endures.” 

— Thomas Denman, Lord Chief Justice of England, for eighteen 
years. Extract from speech in opening of the London Literary 
and Scientific Institution, 1828. 


226 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


NAPOLEON 

“Napoleon has many claims, military glory, internal improvement of 
everything—the monuments of art, and, above all, the embellishrnent of 
Paris. How this last object has been carried on to the astonishing ex¬ 
tent we see, by a man constantly engaged in such wars, is perfectly in¬ 
conceivable. * * * It happens that all Prance can boast of is connected 
with his name.”— Thomas Denman. 

COMMIT WHAT YOU WRITE 

“Anything worth writing is worth committing to memory.” 

Thos. Denman, Eng., (1779-1854), Chief Justice of England, 1832-1850 
—18 years. Was counsel, with Brougham, for queen Caroline; and dis¬ 
sented in O’Connell trial, for treason, while a judge.— The Author. 


OWNERSHIP OF REAL ESTATE THE BASIS OP LIBERTY 

“A general and tolerably equal distribution of landed property is the 
whole basis of national freedom. The system of the great Montesquieu 
will ever be erroneous till the words property or lands in fee simple are 
substituted for virtue throughout his ‘Spirit of Laws.” Virtue, patriot¬ 
ism, or love of country never was and never will be till men’s natures 
are changed, a fixed, permanent principle and support of government. 
But in an agricultural country a general possession of land in fee simple 
may be rendered perpetual and the inequahties introduced by commerce 
are too fiuctuating to endanger government. An equahty of property, 
with a necessity of ahenation, constantly operating to destroy com¬ 
binations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic. While this 
continues, the people will inevitably possess both power and freedom; 
when this is lost power departs, liberty expire's and a commonwealth will 
inevitably assume some other form. 

“The liberty of the press, trial by jury, the habeas corpus writ, even 
Magna Charta itself, although justly deemed the palladia of freedom, 
are all inferior considerations when compared with a general distribution 
of real property among every class of people. The power of entailing 
estates is more dangerous to liberty and republican government than all 
the constitutions that can be written on paper, or even than a standing 
army. Let the people have property and they will have power—a power 
that will forever be exerted to prevent a restriction of the press and aboli¬ 
tion of trial by jury, or the abridgement of any other privilege. The 
liberties of America, therefore, and her forms of government, stand on 
the broadest basis. Removed from the fears of a foreign invasion and 
conquest, they are not exposed to the convulsions that shake other 
governments; and the principles of freedom are so general and energetic 
as to exclude the possibility of a change in our republican constitutions. 

“But while property is considered as the basis of the freedom of the 
American yeomanry there are other auxiliary supports, among which 
is the information of the people.”— Noah Webster, Connecticut, 1758-181^3. 

Noah Webster, noted scholar and author of the first Webster’s Dic¬ 
tionary. His spelling-book (1783-5) remained in use for two generations. 
His dictionary was published in this country and Great Britain in 1828 
and in an enlarged edition in 1840-41. Noah Webster started out as a 
lawyer.— Author. 



CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW (1834- ), New York 


HAMILTON 

“In no age or country has there appeared a more precocious or amazing 
intelligence than Hamilton. At seventeen, he annihilated the President 
of his college upon the question of the rights of the colonies, in a series 
of anonymous articles which were credited to the ablest men of the 
country; at forty-seven, when he died, his briefs had become the law of 
the land, and his fiscal system was, and after one hundred years, remains, 
the rule and policy of our government. He gave life to the corpse of 
national credit, and the strength for self-preservation and aggressive 
power to the Federal Union. Both as an expounder of the principles 
and an administrator of the affairs of government he stands supreme and 
unrivaled in American history.” 

—Chauncey M. Depew—Centennial Anniversary, N. Y., Apr. 30, ’59. 

A LAWYER’S EDUCATION NEVER ENDS 

“The valedictorian of the college, the brilliant victors of the Moot 
Courts who failed to fulfill the promise of their youth, have neglected to 
continue the study and lost the enthusiasm to which they owed their 
triumphs on mimic battlefields. Business men may have a lucky stroke 
of*-fortune; preachers may buy or borrow sermons; quacks may win 
riches by a patent medicine; but the lawyer can rely on no one but himself. 
He is like the knight in the ancient tournament, when the herald sounded 
the trumpet, and rode down the lists. Whether he splintered his enemy’s 
lance or was unhorsed himself, depended upon his own prowess and skill. 
Upon his advice men risk their characters and fortunes. In the exegesis 
of the trial he wins or loses by his own knowledge of his case, his ability 
to draw from a well-stocked armory the principles to meet unexpected 
issues, his readiness to seize and turn to instant advantage testimony 
which can help to avert the force of that which can harm, by his trained 
ability to so discern and analyze amidst the mass of conflicting evidence 
the truth he seeks, and so present his cause to the court and jury, that 
he brings them both to his own convictions. This can only be done by 
thorough preparation and laborious study continued all through life. It is 
very difficult, with no immediate motive to offer incentive, to study and 
read while waiting for clients. It requires discipline, and is discipline. 
It tests the question of fitness for the work of the profession.” 

THE EMPIRE STATE 

“When the Yankee conquered New York, his union with the Dutch 
formed these sterling elements which have made the Republic what it is. 
Yankee ideas prevailed in this land in the grandest contest in the Senate 
of the U. S. which has ever taken place, or ever will; in the victory of 
Nationalism over Sectionalism by the ponderous eloquence of that great 
defender of the Constitution, Daniel.Webster. And when, failing in 
the forum. Sectionalism took the field, Yankee ideas conquered again in 
that historic meeting when Lee gave up his sword to Grant. And when, 
in the distribution of credit and industry which followed, the twin her¬ 
esies Expansion and Repudiation stalked abroad, Yankee ideas conquered 
again in the policy of our distinguished guest, the Secretary of the Treas¬ 
ury (John Sherman). So great a triumph has never been won by any 
financial officer of the government before, as in the funding of our national 


228 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


debt at four per cent, and the restoration of the national credit, which 
has given an impluse to our prosperity and industry that can neither be 
stray^nor stopped. 

“When Henry Hudson sailed up the great harbor of New York, and 
saw with prophetic vision its magnificent opportunities, he could only 
emphasise his thought, with true Dutch significance, in one sentence— 
‘See here!’ ^'^en the Yankee came and settled in New York, He empha¬ 
sized his coming with another sentence—‘Sit here!’ And he sat down 
upon the Dutchman with such force that he squeezed him out of his 
cabbage and his residence. He found this city laid out in a beautiful 
labyrinth of cowpatches, with the inhabitants and the houses all standing 
with the gableends to the street, and he turned them all to the avenue, 
and made New York a parallelogram of palaces; and he has multiplied 
to such extent that now he fills every nook of our great State, and we 
recognize here tonight that, with no tariff, and free trade between New 
England and New York, the native specimen is an improvement upon the 
imported article. * * * 

“New York, today, the Empire State of all the great States of the 
Commonwealths, brings in thru her grand avenue to the sea 80 per cent 
of all the imports, and sends forth a majority of all the exports of the 
Republic. She collects and pays four-fifths of the taxes which carry 
on the government of the country. In the close competition to secure the 
great Western commerce which is today feeding the world and seeking 
an outlet along 3,000 miles of coast, she holds by her commercial prestige 
and enterprise more than all the ports from New Orleans to Portland 
combined. Let us, whether native or adopted New Yorkers, be true 
to the past, to the present, to the future, of this commercial and financial 
metropolis. Let us enlarge our terminal facilities and bring the rail and 
the steamship together. Let us do away with the burdens that make 
New York the dearest, and make her the cheapest, port on the continent; 
and let us impress our commercial ideas upon the national legislature, 
so that the navigation laws, which have driven the merchant marine of 
the Republic from the seas, shall be repealed, and the breezes of every 
clime shall unfurl and the waves of every sea reflect, the flag of the 
Republic.’’ 

—Chauncey M. Depew, N. Y., Dec. 22, 1879. Graduated at Yale, 
’58; admitted to N. Y. bar, ’58; attorney for N. Y. Central and Hud¬ 
son River R. R., ’69; president of that Ry., ’85-98; U. S. Senate, ’99- 
1910. 


McKINLEY’S FIRST CASE 

After McKinley had been admitted to the bar and opened a law office 
in Canton, O., a fortnight passed without a client, and the youthful 
lawyer was beginning to find the time hang very heavy on his hands. 
Then one day his old preceptor. Judge Glidden, stepped into his little 
office. 

“McKinley,’’ said he, “here are the papers in a case of mine. It comes 
up tomorrow. I have got to go out of town, and I want you to take charge 
of it for me.” 

McKinley was nonplussed; declared he could not do justice to the case 
at so short a notice. “I never have tried a single case yet. Judge,” said he. 

“Well, begin on this one then,” was the Judge’s reply. And it Avas 
finally settled that McKinley should do so. He sat up all night worlring 
on the case, tried it the next day, and won it. A few days later Judge 
Glidden entered his office and handed him $25. McKinley demurred at 
taking it. 

“It is too much for one day’s work,” he said. 

“Don’t let that worry you,” replied Glidden, “I charged them $100 
for the case, and I can well afford a quarter of iCto you.” 



WIRT DEXTER (1831-1890), Illinois 


“PULLMAN CO. NOT LIABLE FOR PASSENGER’S STOLEN 

PROPERTY” 

Wirt Dexter, of Chicago, was a son of Judge Samuel W. Dexter, the 
founder of Dexter, Mich., and a nephew of FranMin Dexter, a contemporary 
of Daniel Webster, and grandson of Samuel Dexter, of Boston, Secretary 
of War, and afterwards of the Treasury, in John Adams’s cabinet; called 
by Daniel Webster, ‘the Great Expounder of tile Con^itution’. Wirt 
Dexter established the law in the State of Illinois that the Pullman Car 
Co. is not liable for goods or money so lost, as an inn-keeper, or as a 
common carrier. Mr. Dexter took the position that the Company was 
not liable as an inn-keeper, because it was not open to the general public, 
that it received pay in advance, from lodgers, merely for sleeping ac¬ 
commodations afforded by their cars, and only for a particular class, 
and for a particular trip, and for a particular berth; second, that the 
Company was not liable as a common ' carrier, because the Company 
received no pay for transportation—the railroad company receiving all 
the pay for transportation, and under an arrangement with the Pullman 
Co., hauling its cars. The Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed the cor¬ 
rectness of each of these defenses, and this decision has since been the 
law of the business of the Pullman Co. (See The Pullman Co. v. Smith, 
73 Ill., 360). 

Another great case was one in favor of the Northwestern University, 
which held exempt from taxation 250 acres of^ery valuable land, upon 
which was located the University, and which was platted into lots, under 
a provision of the Constitution of the State, exempting from taxation 
certain defined property. The language of the Constitution being in 
the following words:— 

“All property of institutions of learning, including the real estate upon 
such institutions, are located, not leased by such institutions, or otherwise 
used with a view to profit.” 

Another great case was Blatchford v. Newberry, 99 Ill., 11, involving 
$5,000,000. “Mr. Wirt Dexter knew Burke, Erskine, Curran, and 
Brougham, Webster, Choate, O’Connor, Black and Jeremiah Mason,” 
says Franklin H. Heard, “as if he had spent his life in their company. 
* * * He had a life-long admiration for good talkers, and his friendships 
were broad while discriminating. His father was a boyhood friend of 
Wendell Phillips, and the house of Mr. Dexter was for twenty years the 
Chicago home of this graceful and brilliant orator. James Russell 
Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Charles Dudley 
Warner, Judge David Davis, Henry Irving, and a host of men 
eminent and honored in every walk of life, also regarded Mr. Dexter’s 
house as their natural stopping place, when in the city.” 


MARK TWAIN ON ADVERTISING 

When Twain was editing the Virginia City Enterprise, writing copy 
one day and mining the next, a superstitious subscriber once wrote and 
said he had found a spider in his paper, was this good or bad luck? Twain 
replied, in “Answers to Correspondents” column as follows: ‘‘Old 

Subscriber: The finding of a spider in your copy of the paper was neither 
good or bad luck. The spider was merely looking over our pages to find 
what merchant was not advertising so it could spin itsvweb across his 
door in anticipation of leading an undisturbed existence forever after.” 

— The Author. 



SAMUEL DEXTER (1761-1816), Massachusetts 


AN IMPARTIAL JUDICIARY 

“It is proved by the history of man, at least of civil society, that ; 
the moment the judicial power becomes corrupt, liberty expires. What 
is liberty but the enjoyment of your rights, free from outrage or danger? 
And what security have you for these but an impartial administration of 
justice? Life, liberty, reputation, property, and domestic happiness, 
are all under its peculiar protection. It is the judicial power uncorrupted ^ 

that brings to the dwelling of every citizen, all the blessings of civilized j 

society, and makes it de»r to man. Little has the private citizen to do : 

with other branches of government. What to him are the great and J 

splendid events that ag^andize a few eminent men that make a figure | 

in history? His domestic happiness is not less real because it will not j 

be recorded for posterity; but this happiness is his no longer than courts 
of justice respect it. It is true injuries cannot always be prevented; 
but while the fountains of justice are pure, the sufferer is sure of recom- 1 

pense. Contemplate the intermediate horrors and final despotism ; 

that must result from mutual deeds of vengeance, when there is no longer 
an impartial judiciary, to which contending parties may appeal, with full 1 
confidence that principles will be respected. Fearful must be the interval ‘ 
of anarchy; fierce the alternate pangs of rage and terror, till one party ' 
shall destroy the other, and a gloomy despotism terminate the struggles ' 
of conflicting factions.” , ; 

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

“It is objected that we know not the manner in which a human being : 

after death can be awakened to life. I answer, supposing it to be true I 

that we are to live again, yet we can know nothing about it, for want of ' 

means of knowledge. Where there can exist no experience there can exist j 

no knowledge; and probability is all that it is possible to obtain. The in- ^ 

ability of a blind man to discover colors does not disprove their exist- j 

ence. Even when we have experience of facts, we often know nothing of j 

the cause or manner of their production. When anyone will tell me how j 

an oak is produced from an acorn, I will tell him how an immortal being j 

is produced from a man. Probably the successive stages of man’s existence i 

are produced by the regular operation of Nature’s proqess of vegetation, 
by which a beautiful flower rises from the dust of the earth. We know not ■ 
how—perhaps, our next stage of being may be only preparatory to anoth¬ 
er, and the time may arrive when to us Nature will no longer be a mystery. 

But, at present, we are so constantly reminded of our ignorance that an 
objection, founded on the presumption that we know the system of 
things and the manner of Nature’s operations, future as weU as present, 
cannot outweigh the strong probability which results from the fore¬ 
going observations.” 

A DISHONORED HOME 

“The great principles of common sense and of truth belong to us all. 3 
They are one and the same, today and forever. A matter so very Intel- J 




GEEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


231 


ligible, as that, which awaits your decision, cannot differently affect 
the minds of different individuals. Therfeore, it is that I repose the 
most perfect reliance upon the decision of your Honors (the case was 
before the Supreme Court of Mass.), on the present occasion. I cannot 
be mistaken, in reading aright a decree, in favor of my deeply injured 
client (Dexter was for the plaintiff husband, who sought a divorce, 
a vinculo for adultery on the wife’s part), in the countenance of those 
who are to pronounce his destiny today. But let me suppose that you 
reject his appeal—whither shall he fly? That home has become a hell 
upon earth for him! You will bid him seek comfort, under that dis¬ 
honored roof, and soothe his anguish in the presence of his children ? 
His children! He may take them upon his knee—not with that feeling 
of paternal confidence, as in other days—but for the purpose of scrutinizing 
their countenances for the lineaments of every false friend!” 

— Dexter's answer to William Sullivan and Harrison Gray Otis, 
in a divorce case. 

PARALLEL BETWEEN DEXTER AND PINKNEY 

“We have had very great display of eloquence, Mr. Pinkney and 
Mr. Dexter have particularly distinguished themselves —sometimes 
opposed, sometimes eolleagued together. Mr. Dexter’s eloquence you 
have heard; he and Mr. Pinkney have called crowded houses; all the belles 
of the city have attended, and have been entertained for hours. I must, 
however, after all, give the preference to Mr. Pinkney’s oratory. He 
is more vivacious, sparkling and glowing; more select and exact in his 
language, more polished in his style, and more profound and earnest in 
his judicial learning. Mr. Dexter is calm, collected, and forcible, appealing 
to the judgment. Mr. Pinkney is vehement, rapid, and alternately de¬ 
lights the fancy and seizes on the understanding. He can be as close in his 
logic as Mr. Dexter when he chooses; but he can also step aside at will 
from the path, and strew flowers of rhetoric around him. Dexter is more 
uniform, and contents himself with keeping you where you are. Pinkney 
hurries you along with him, and persuades as well as convinces you. 
You hear Dexter without effort; he is always distinct and perspicuous, 
and allows you an opportunity to weigh as you proceed. Pinkney is 
no less luminous, but he keeps the mind on the stretch, and yqu must 
move rapidly or you lose the course of his argument.” 

—Joseph Story—in letter to his wife, Washington D. C., March 10, 

Rufus Choate said: “I used to hear the elder generation of judges and 
lawyers say that Dexter had made arguments greater than Webster’s.” 

Daniel Webster said of him: 

“In point of character, Dexter undoubtedly stands next to Parsons at 
the Boston bar; and in the neighboring counties and States, I suppose he 
stands above him. He has a strong, generalizing, capacious mind. 
He sees his subject in one view, and in that view, single and alone, he 
presents it to the contemplation of the hearer. Unable to follow Parsons 
in minute, technical distinctions. Parsons is unable to follow him in 
occasional vaultings and boundings of his mind. Unlike Parsons, too, 
he cannot be great on little occasions. Parsons begins with maxims,^ and 
his course to the particular subject and particular conclusion brightens 
and shines more and more clearly to its end. 

“Dexter begins with the particular position which he intends to support; 
darkness surrounds him; no one knows the path by which he arrives 
at his conclusion. Around him, however, is a circle of light when he opens 
his mouth. Like a conflagration seen at a distance, the evening mists 


232 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


may intervene between it and the eye of the observer, altho the blaze 
ascend to the sky and cannot be seen.” 

—{Said by Webster, when studying law in Christopher Gore’s office 
in Boston, 1804 — Harvey’s Reminiscences of Webster, 82.) 

JUDGE STORY’S ANECDOTE OF MARSHALL, AMES, AND 

DEXTER 

Mr. Samuel Dexter was once in company with Fisher Ames and 
Chief Justice Marshall. The latter commenced a conversation (for he 
was almost alone in the conversation) which lasted some three hours. 
On breaMng up, Ames and Dexter commenced, on their way home, 
praising the depth and learning of their noble host. Said Ames, after 
a short talk, ‘To confess the truth Dexter, I have not understood a word 
of his argument for half an hour.’ ‘And I,’ good humoredly rejoined 
Dexter, ‘have been out of my depth for an hour and a half.’ ” 

—2 Story’s Life and Letters, 604 

THEOPHILUS PARSONS, JR.’S, ESTIMATE 

“Of my father’s contemporaries at the bar, I suppose that the four 
most eminent were Sullivan, Dexter, Otis and Prescott. Sullivan was 
older than my father. He died in 1808, and I never knew him. Samuel 
Dexter was eleven years younger. He died in 1816, aged fifty-four. 
I cannot say that I ever knew him personally. I have seen him, however, 
as I was nineteen when he died; and a year or two before his death I heard 
him make a speech in Fanueil Hall, in which he gave his reasons for not 
supporting the measures of the Federal Party, of which, to that hour, he 
had been the leader. If this was not his greatest speech, it ' was one of 
the greatest ever delivered in that hall, or as I think, anywhere. Pew 
events of my earlier years do I remember so perfectly. I cannot recall 
the line of argument, but the tone and manner, and the effect, I well 
remember. There.was nothing in it of apology, nothing of entreaty, 
little, indeed, of self-defense; but such an explanation of his conduct, 
and such a statement of his principles, as a man might make to his 
fellow citizens, while he respected them and was determined that they 
should, respect him. As I recall him, it does not seem to me that he had 
much elegance, or even eloquence, of language or delivery, but that the 
whole speech, in tone, words, thoughts, and effect, was characterized 
by power. He did not seem to persuade men to believe with him, but to 
compel them to see that as truth which he thought to be true. I suppose 
he was not a scientific lawyer —not one, I mean, acquainted with the 
whole system of the law, and seeing every part in the light of all the 
rest. But he was a very great lawyer in rem; for he brought to the 
examination of a case extraordinary ability, learning enough to guide his 
study and thorough devotion to his work. As an advocate in cases 
which demand a close investigation of complicated facts and rules, and 
a clear perception and a strong hold of the guiding principles that is 
to solve the problem finally, and the power to carry the court and jury 
with him through the long research or argument, I am confident that 
he was never surpassed in New England, if in our country.” 

— Memoir of Chief Justice Parsons, 181-2. 

THE EMBARGO CASE 

“The case came to hearing and solemn argument; and he who espoused 
their (New England’s) cause, and stood up for them against the validity 
of the ‘Embargo Act’, was none other than that great man of whom the 
gentleman (Robt. Y. Hayne) has made honorable mention, Samuel 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


233 


Dexter. He was then, sir, in the fullness of his knowledge and the 
maturity of his strength. He had retired from long and distinguished 
public service here, to the renewed pursuit of professional duties, carrying 
with him all that enlargement and expansion, all the new strength and 
force, which an acquaintance with the more general subjects discussed 
in the national counsels is capable of adding to professional attainment, 
in a mind of true greatness and comprehension. He was a lawyer, and 
he also was a statesman. He had studied the Constitution, when he 
filled public station, that he might defend it; he had examined its principles 
that he might maintain them. More than all men, or at least as much 
as any man, he was attached to the general government and to the union 
of the States. His feelings and ojinions all ran in that direction. A 
question of Constitutional law, too, was, of all objects, that one which 
was best suited to his talents and learning, such a question gave oppor¬ 
tunity for that deep and clear analysis, that mighty grasp of principle 
which so much distinguished his higher efforts. His very statement was 
argument; his inference seemed demonstration. The earnestness of his 
own conviction wrought conviction in others. One was convinced, and 
believed, and assented, because it was gratifying, delightful, to think and 
feel, and believe, in union with an intellect of such evident superiority.” 

—From Daniel Webster's Reply to Robt. Y. Hayne, in the United 

States Senate, Jan. 26-7, 1830. 

TILT WITH JUDGE DAVIS IN EMBARGO CASE 

“Mr. Dexter argued in the Embargo Cases, as they were called, that 
a majority, in New England, deemed this law a violation of the Con¬ 
stitution. * * * Here is a law stopping^ all commerce, and stopping it 
indefinitely. The law is perpetual; that is, is not limited in point of time 
and must of course, continue until repealed. It is as perpetual, therefore, 
as the law against treason or murder. Now is it regulating commerce, 
or destroying it? Is it guiding, controlling, giving the rule to commerce, 
as a subsisting thing, or is it putting an end to it altogether? After 
Judge Davis, who had been Dexter’s classmate at college, decided that 
the law was constitutional, and before that decision had been confirmed 
by a higher tribunal, Dexter persisted in arguing the question of con¬ 
stitutionality to the jury, notwithstanding the remonstrance of the 
Bench. At length. Judge Davis, under some excitement, and after re¬ 
peated admonitions, said to Dexter, that if he again attempted to raise 
that question to the jury, he should feel it to be his duty to commit 
him for contempt of court. A solemn pause ensued; and all eyes were 
turned towards Dexter. With great calmness of voice and manner, he 
requested postponement of the case until the following morning. The 
Judge assented; some other matter was taken up; Dexter left the court¬ 
room. The next morning there was a full attendance of persons anxious 
to witness the result of this extraordinary collision between the advocate 
and the Judge. Being asked if he was ready to proceed, Dexter rose, 
and facing the Bench, commenced by stating that he had slept poorly, 
—had passed a night of great anxiety; had reflected very solemnly 
upon the occurrence of yesterday; and trusted it had not failed to ex¬ 
ercise the thoughts of another, in all its bearings. No man cherished a 
higher respect for the legitimate authority of those tribunals before 
which he was called to practice his profession; but he entertained no less 
respect for his moral obligations to his clients. And, finally, after a 
few additional remarks, he stated to the Court that he had arrived 
at the clear conviction that it was his duty to argue the constitutional 
question to the jury, notwithstanding the decision of a single judge, 
of an inferior grade (Davis was a U. S. District Judge); and that he 
should proceed to do so, regardless of any consequences. He then turned 
to the jury; and, undisturbed by the Court, began, continued, and 


234 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ended a most elaborate argument against the constitutionality of the 
Embargo Law.”— Sigmas ^Reminiscences of Samuel Dexterf 60-1. 




INTEMPERANCE 


“Give me the money paid for the support of drunken paupers in the 
/ U. S., and I will pay the expense of* the Federal and every State govern- 
■ ment in the Union, and in a few years become as rich with the surplus 
as the Nabob of Arcot.”— Sigma's ^Reminiscences', 2If.. 


\ 


HATRED AND LOVE 

‘It is equally true of hatred as of love, that neither stands still.’ 
RUFUS CHOATE’S ESTIMATE 


“Choate remarked on the very evanescent nature of traditionary 
repute—in reply to Parker’s suggestion that he did not take half care 
enough of his fame,—and observed how entirely Samuel Dexter had 
faded from memory; of whom said he, ‘I used to hear arguments greater 
than Webster’s.’”— Parker's ^Reminiscences,' 298. 

FISHER AMES ON DEXTER 


Fisher Ames wrote Christopher Gore in 1802—“Dexter is very able 
and will be an Ajax at the bar as long as he stays. You know, however, 
that his aversion to reading and to the practice is avowed. His head 
aches on reading a few hours, and if he did not love money very well, 
he would not pursue the law.”— Warren's Hist. Am. Bar, 308. 

JUDGE STORY’S ESTIMATE’ 

“He opened his arguments in a progressive order, erecting each suc¬ 
cessive position upon some other, whose solid mass he had already 
established, on an immovable foundation; till, at last, the superstructure 
seemed, by its height and ponderous proportions, to bid defiance to the 
assaults of human ingenuity. I am aware that these expressions may be 
deemed the exaggerations of fancy, but SKinly describe what I have felt, 
on my own mind; and I gather from others that I have not been singular 
in my feelings. * * * in general acquirements, he was unquestionably in¬ 
ferior to many; and even in professional science, he could scarcely be 
considered as very profound, or very learned. He had disinclination 
to the pages of black letter law, which he sometimes censured, as the 
scholastic refinements of monkish ages; and, even for the common branches 
of technical science, the doctrines of special pleading, and the niceties of 
feudal tenures, he professed to feel little or no reverence. * * * In short, 
there have been men, some thoroughly imbued with all the fine tinctures of 
classic taste; men of more playful and cultured imaginations; of more 
deep and accurate research; more varied and finished learning. But, if 
the capacity to examine a question, by the most comprehensive analysis; 
to subject all its relations to the test of the most subtle logic; and to 
exhibit them in perfect transparency to the minds of others—if the 
capacity to detect with an unerring judgment the weak points of an 
argument, and to strip off every veil from sophistry of error;—if the 
capacity to seize, as it were, by intuition, the learning and arguments of 
others, and instantaneously to fashion them to his own purposes— 
if, I say, these constitute some of the highest prerogatives of genius, 
it will be difficult to find many rivals or superiors to Mr. Dexter. In 
the sifting and comparison of evidence, and in moulding its heterogeneous 
materials into one consistent mass, the bar and the bench have pronounced 
him almost inimitable.”— Remarks upon Dexter's death, in 1816. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


235 


DEXTER ON WASHINGTON 

“With patriotic pride we review the life of Washington and compare 
him with those of other ^countries who have been pre-eminent in fame. 
Ancient and modern names, are diminished before him. Greatness and 
guilt have too often been allied; but his fame is whiter than it is brilliant. 
The destroyers of nations stood abashed, at the majesty of his virtue. 
It reproved the intemperance of their ambition, and darkened the splendor 
of victory. The scene is closed, and we are no longer anxious, lest mis¬ 
fortune should sully his glory; he has traveled on to the end of his journey, 
and carried with him an increased weight of honor; he has deposited it 
safely, where misfortune cannot tarnish it, where malice cannot blast 
it. Favored of Heaven, he departed, without exhibiting the weakness 
of humanity. Magnanimous in death, the darkness of the grave could 
not obscure his brightness.” 

—From Dexter's Resolutions of Condolence on the Death of Wash¬ 
ington, as he was chairman of a committee of three, Dexter, Ross 
and Read, Dec. 19, 1799. 

SOUND, NOT SENSE IN ORATORY 

Of certain orators Dexter said: “They have the happy talent of keeping 
the sound agoing after the sense has gone.” 


THE BIBLE 

Kent: “The general diffusion of the Bible is the most effectual way 
to civilize and humanize mankind; to purify and exalt the general system 
of pubhc morals; to give efficacy to the just precepts of international and 
municipal law; to enforce the observance of prudence, temperance, 
justice and fortitude; and to improve all the relations of social and 
domestic life.” 

Sir Wm. Jones: “The Bible contains more true sublimity, more 
exquisite beauty, more pure morality,- more important history, and 
finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all 
other books, in whatever age or language they may have been written.” 

Daniel Webster: “Philosophical argument, especially that drawn 
from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent 
insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the 
faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me 
that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. * * * I believe 
that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious 
meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intend¬ 
ed for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover 
its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics 
and philosophers can discover it. * * * I have read the Bible through many 
times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year. 
It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man 
who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct.” 

J. Q. Adams: “In what fight soever we regard the Bible, whether 
with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable 
and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.” * * * 

“I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you. 
Search the Scriptures! The Bible is the book of all others, to be read 
at all ages, and in all conditions of human fife; not to be read once or 
twice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of 
one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted unless_ by 
some overruling necessity. * * * So great is my veneration for the Bible, 
that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be 
my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country and respect¬ 
able members of society.” 



DANIEL S. DICKINSON (1800-1866), New York 


PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE 

“Practical agriculture is coeval with the history of man. The children 
of Israel, on coming to the possession of the fair land of Canaan, after 
wandering in the wilderness forty years, addressed themselves to its 
cultivation. When the prophet Elijah passed by and east his mantle 
upon Elisha, he found him plowing in the field, with twelve yoke of oxen 
before him, himself with the twelfth; and the servants and oxen of 
the affluent Indumean were engaged in the same pursuit when they fell 
prey to the rapacity of the Sabeans. Many of the most interesting and 
poetic incidents of the Scriptures are touching the harvesting and glean¬ 
ing of fields, and rural occupations, and its pages are replete with descrip¬ 
tions of the management of flocks and herds, sheep shearing, threshing 
floors, and the enjoyments of husbandry. 

“The mind of the professional man is engaged with his particular 
calling, runs in grooves fashioned by his pursuit. * * ♦ merchant 

is buried in commerce, and the mechanic is absorbed with inventions and 
improvements. But the farmer, devoted to no theories, and wedded to 
no systems, with the ample volume of Nature constantly before* him, 
unfolding her mysteries and spreading out her allurements, the deep 
fountains of knowledge stand open, and all combines to inspire him with 
the love of the sublime and beautiful, to store his mind with that practical, 
useful knowledge which energizes the man’s nature to loftier and nobler 
pursuits.” 

—Daniel S. Dickinson, N. Y. (1800-1866). To the Queens County 
Agricultural Society, N. Y., Oct., 18^3. 

He was a very brilliant lawyer. Judge of the N. Y. Supreme Court in 
1837; refused a judgeship on me N. Y. Court of Appeals; United States 
Senator from 1844 to 1850. 

THE BIBLE 

“The Bible is a history, the narrative of a multitude of miraculous 
facts, which skepticism has often challenged, but never disproved—a 
poem moral and didactic—a repertory of divine instinct—a collection of 
the deepest intuitions of truth, beauty, justice and holiness; destined 
to command, to charm, to sublimate the mind of man; wliich for ages 
has been exposed to the keenest investigation—to a fire which has con¬ 
sumed contemptuously the mythology of the Iliad, the husbandry of 
the Georgic, the historical relations of Livy, the fables of the Shasters, 
the Talmud, and the Koran, the artistic merit of many a popular poem, 
and the authority of many a work of philosophy and science.”— Daniel 
S. Dickinson. 


KNOWLEDGE 

“Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but 
knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in fame, unlimited in 
space, and definite in duration. In the performance of its sacred offices, 
it fears no danger, spares no expense, looks into the volcano, dives into 
the ocean, perforates the earth, wings its flight into the skies, explores 
sea and land, contemplates the distant, examines the minute, compre¬ 
hends the great, ascends to the sublime—^no peace too remote for its 
grasp, no height too exalted for its reach.” 

—DeWitt Clinton, of N. Y., 1760-1828. 



JOHN F. DILLON (1831-1914), New York 

TRIAL BY JURY 


“It (the trial by jury) is a cherished right. It is protected from legis¬ 
lative overthrow by the National and by all our State constitutions. 

It is a historical and essential part of the free institutions of England. \ 
It equally belongs to our own free institutions. It springs out of them ' 
and tends to support and perpetuate them. It is my firm conviction s 
that the love of liberty, of liberty regulated by law, and a general and 
habitual reverence for and obedience to the Constitution aftd the laws, 
are the only ties which can surely hold together our vast republic. These j 
are the sources of our greatness and the foumdation of our hopes. Let 
us never forget the truth so nobly expressed by Burke: ‘Justice is itself 
the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure 
from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no 
policy at all.’ ” 

WHAT IS A LEGAL RIGHT? 

“Nothing is a legal right unless it implies a capacity residing in one 
person of controlling, with the assent and assistance of the State, the 
actions of others; and that which gives validity, or at least effect, if not 
existence, to a legal right, is in every case the force which is lent to it 
by the State. Duty is the correlative of right, and duty in a legal sense 
implies sanction or amenability to sanction, which sanction it is the 
function of the judicial tribunals to apply and enforce. Whatever rights 
and duties they thus recognize and enforce are legal rights and duties, 
and for practical purposes none others fall within the domain of the law 
so far as lawyers and courts are concerned. A moral right, if disregarded, 
will be viewed with public censure or disapprobation, but that is all; 
a legal right, however, if desregarded, will be enforced by the pubUc will 
of the organized society which is called the State.” 

— The Laws and Jurisprudence of America. P. 12. 

THE COMMON LAW 

“The common law is the basis of the laws of every State and Territory 
of the Union, with comparatively unimportant and gradually waning 
exceptions. And a most fortunate circumstance it is, that, divided as 
our territory is into so many States, each supreme within the limits of 
its power, a common and uniform general system of jurisprudence under¬ 
lies and pervades them all; and this quite aside from the excellences of 
that system, concerning which I shall presently speak. My present 
point is this: That the mere fact that one and the same system of juris¬ 
prudence exists in all of the States is of itself of vast importance, since 
it is a most powerful agency in promoting commercial, social, and intel¬ 
lectual intercourse, and in cementing the national unity. This view is 
so important that I must take leave to dwell upon it for a moment. 

“Jurisprudence, as I have heretofore pointed out, is not something 
in the air—something lifted up above and abstracted from the life of 
jnen—but an eminently practical science, which has to do directly with 
the conduct and relations of men, and with their conduct and relations 
as members of a particular State. It therefore necessarily partakes of a 
national character, as, for example, Roman jurisprudence, English juris¬ 
prudence, etc., referring thereby to the principles and character of 
the distinctive legal systems of these several peoplee. The Roman law 
affiliates the legal systems of continental Europe and gives them 


238 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


a common, an organic character. So the common law affiliates the 
legal systems of England and the United States, and also the legal 
system of each State with the legal system of all the other States of the 
Union. It makes them all akin. It’gives them an organic character. 
It is a living bond of union, since it is the cause and medium of a constant 
and active intercommunication and intercourse, making the people 
of the whole country neighbors. The legal systems of our forty-four 
States have not only the same general character but they are substantially 
uniform and identical. So completely is this the case that I speak from my 
observation and experience when I state that a thoroughly educated 
and trained lawyer of any one State, having access to the statutes and 
reports, is competent to deal with, and in fact our lawyers daily do deal 
with, questions and cases arising in and governed by the laws of any of 
the other States.”— The Laws and Jurisprudence of America, pp. 155-7. 

THE IDEAL LAWYER 

“The true conception—ideal if you please, of the lawyer, is that of 
one who worthily magnifies the nature and duties of his office; who 
scorns every form of meanness or disreputable practice, who, by unwearied 
industry, masters the vast and complex learning and details of his pro¬ 
fession; but who, not satisfied with this, studies the eternal prin(5iples 
of justice as developed and illustrated in the history of the law, and in 
the jurisprudence of other times and nations, so earnestly that he falls 
in love with them and is thenceforward not content unless he is endeav¬ 
oring by every means in his power to be not only an ornament but a 
help unto the laws and jurisprudence of his State and Nation.” 

—Before NatH Bar Ass’n, at Saratoga Springs N. F., Aug. 22, 1894-. 

THE IDEAL JUDGE 

“The true ideal of a Judge is no longer a figure with bandaged eyes, 
but rather the figure of one who carries in his upraised hand the torch 
of truth from on high, and who, throughout the arguments of counsel 
and in the maze and labyrinth of adjudged cases, walks ever with firm 
step in the illumination of its constant and steady fiame.” 

—Suggested by The Statue of Liberty'^ in N. Y. Bay.—^'Laws 
and Jurisprudence of England and America'^ 188. 

IDEAL JUSTICE 

“The most satisfactory ideal I have ever been able to form of justice 
is embodied in the picture of a judge courageous enough ‘to give the 
devil his due,’ whether he be in the right or in the wrong.” 

—'‘Laws and Jurisprudence of England and America,” 188. 

BLACKSTONE 

“If in the presence of the cares and toils which are the common lot of 
the successful lawyer, you will make it a point every year once to read 
the ‘Commentaries of the Laws of England’ by Sir William Blackstone 
you will thank me as often as you shall complete the reading for the 
advice I have thus ventured to give.” 

—“Laws of Jurisprudence of England and America.” 312-13. 


CHARLES DOE (1830-1897), New Hampshire ^ 

FORBIDDING OF THE KILLING OF ANIMALS DESTROYING 
PROPERTY—UNCONSTITUTIONAL. “THE MINK CASE.” 

“To hold, in this case, that the geese should have been driven away 
from their home, would be equivalent to holding that they should have 
been killed. The doctrine of retreat would leave them a right to nothing 
but life in some place inaccessible to minks, where life might be unre- 
munerative and burdensome. But that doctrine being irrelevant when 
the aggressor is not shielded by the inviolability of the human form and 
the sacred quality of human life, the geese were not bound to retreat. 
As against the minks, they had a right not only to live, but to live where 
the defendant chose, on his soil and pond, and to enjoy such food, drink 
and sanitary privileges as they found there, unmolested by these vermin, 
in a state of tranquility conducive to their profitable nature. And it 
was for the jury to say, not whether he could have driven them away 
from the minks, but whether his shot Avas reasonably necessary for the 
protection of his property considering what adequate and economical 
means of permanent protection were available, the legal valuation of 
vermin life, and the disturbance and mischief likely to be wrought upon 
his real and personal estate if any other than a sanguinary defense were 
adopted. 

“The plaintiff’s claim, if upheld, would reach far beyond an unjust 
judgment taking from this defendant the sum of forty dollars and costs. 
It would establish a principle of law novel in theory and practice, sub¬ 
versive of the authorities, extensive in its operations and pernicious in 
its effect. If the defendant’s geese were bound to retreat before these 
vermin, it follows that horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and poultry are bound, 
at common law, to retreat, and be driven by their owners from their 
own land, if retreat is possible, regardless of course or distance, before 
every dog that chooses to attack them: If A’s dog besets B’s house, 
and exhibits an inclination to attack the occupants when they come out, 
they must remain shut up till he sees fit to raise the seige; friends who 
would come to their relief can do nothing but retreat; and, the law of 
retreat not being limited to any particular lines, every person, on his 
own land or in the highway, menaced by another’s dog, is bound not to 
use a deadly weapon, if he can escape by taking refuge in a tree and 
remaining there an indefinite period; and, in many ways, the human 
industries and liberties of the country are subject to interruptions, 
hindrances, and restrictions not heretofore judicially extablished or 
practically acknowledged. In a practical view, the perils, inconveniences, 
and damages caused by perverse and unruly animals, under such a system 
of brutish dominion assume a serious aspect. In a legal view, the expan¬ 
sion of the duty of retreat is a contraction of the natural and constitutional 
right of defending person and property.” 

—Aldrich v. Wright, 53 N. H. 398 {1873). — The verdict of the lower 
court was set aside by Judge Doe. 

“In Aldrich v. Wright, N. H., the judge, holding that a statute 
prohibiting, under penalty, the killing of minks could not constitution¬ 
ally apply to a case where the person accused of the killing acted in defense 
of his property. The opinion occupies 25 pages in the State Report, 
and was decided in 1873. His facetious discussion of the reciprocal 
rights, duties and liabilities of owner, geese and minks has to some 
appeared frivolous. When Judge Doe was suggested as a suitable suc¬ 
cessor to Mr. Justice Clifford upon the U. S. Supreme Court, Senator 
Geo. F. Hoar showed the opinion to several Senators as an argument 
against Judge Doe’s fitness. Yet, the Supreme Court of Mass., in 


240 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Wesbelt v. Wilbur, 177 Mass., 201, cited the case with approval. Judge 
O. W. Holmes adopting the principle of the case as a canon of the common 
law.”-*-5 Great American Lawyers, 293. 

PRECEDENT 

“ As there was a time when no precedents existed, everything that can 
be done with them, can be done without them.”— Charles Doe, in Concord 

Co. V. Robertson, 66 N. H., 18. 

RES ADJUDICATA 

‘‘The maximum which taken literally requires courts to follow decided 
cases is shown by the thousands of overruled decisions to be a figurative 
expression requiring only a reasonable respect for decided cases.” 

— Charles Doe, in Lisbon v. Lyman, 1^.9 N. H., 602. 

SPECULATING AND EXPERIENCE IN APPLYING EVIDENCE 

“When we want to know whether a certain horse is sk ttish or is 
capable of a certain speed, whether a certain substance is poisonous and 
destructive of animal or of vegetable life, whether certain materials 
are of a certain strength, whether a certain field of a certain kind of 
soil is likely to p'oduce a certain kind of amount of crop, whether a 
certain man or brute or machine is likely to perform a certain kind or 
amount of work, or whether anything can be done or is likely to be done, 
one way is to speculate about it, and another way is to try it. The law 
is a practical science, and when it is appealed to direct what means shall 
be used to find out whether a certain pile of lumber is likely to frighten 
horses, if any one asserts that, on this subject, the law prefers speculation 
to experience, abhors, actual experiment and delights in guesswork, 
the person advancing such a proposition takes upon himself the task of 
maintaining it upon some legal rule, distinctly stated by him and well 
established by the authorities. Such a proposition is not sustained by the 
reason of the Taw. It is sustained by nothing that can be justly called 
principle. By what technical rule, at war with reason and principle, is 
it supported ? 

“The only rule relied upon to exclude experimental knowledge in such 
a case as this is the rule requiring the evidence to be confined to the issues, 

-—that is, to the facts put in controversy by the pleadings, prohibiting the 
trial of collateral issues—that is, of the facts not put in issue by the 
pleadings, and excluding such evidence as tends solely to prove facts 
not involved in the issues. This rule merely requires evidence to be 
relevant. It merely excludes what is irrelevant. It is a rule of reason, 
and not an arbitrary or technical one, and it does not exclude all experi¬ 
mental knowledge. A fact as relevant, and so directly involved in the 
issue of guilty or not guilty, between these parties, as any fact in con¬ 
troversy, was Hhe likelihood or probability of the lumber frightening 
ordinary horses. There was nothing collateral— that is, nothing irrelevant 
in that.” 

— Charles Doe, in Darling v. Westmoreland, 52 N. H., lf.05. 


DANIEL DOUGHERTY ( 


), Pennsylvania 


AN ADDRESS TO PATRIOTS 

“Burn and destroy the idols of party you have worshipped; banish 
politics from the municipality and county, limiting it to questions af¬ 
fecting principles in the State and Nation; place competency and integ¬ 
rity at every part of the public service; adorn your courts with judges 
worthiest to wield the attributes of God; elect representatives who will 
reflect the majority of a free people; send to the Senate statesmen whom 
history will immortalize and nations make their models. Americans, 
the countless generations who dwell within the confines of this con¬ 
tinent from now to eternity confide their liberties to you. 

“Uphold them, I implore you, with a patriotism that will never tire; 
guard them with a vigilance that will nev.r sleep.” 

SUCCESS AT THE BAR 

“To become a thorough lawyer one must love the law as a science and 
devote himself almost entirely to it. Constant application, untiring 
patience, common sense and a logical mind are requisites. High char¬ 
acter is essential to permanent success as an advocate. The first may be a 
student, the other must be a man of the world. He must have knowledge 
of human nature as well as law. Sergeant Talfourd lays great stress on 
tact. He should leave nothing to chance—should master his case in 
details. His brief should be complete, with a precedent for every point. 
He should adapt himself to unforseen contingencies. Despite what 
English barristers say he should examine his own witnesses against him. 
He should, for the time, become absorbed in the cause of his client, 
never forgetting, however, that he owes a duty to the court. These and 
fifty other qualities which no one advocate ever had, might be mentioned. 
The possession even of a few, will make a successful trial lawyer.” 


WHAT THE BIBLE IS 

“The Bible is not a book but a library; it took in its formation over a 
thousand years; the books in which it was composed were written in 
different languages, by men of different temperaments, but living cen¬ 
turies apart; in studying and teaching it one must take account of the 
time in which the people to which, and the temperament of the men by 
whom each book or teaching was uttered. My legal and historical 
studies had further prepared me for the view of the Bible which now 
modern scholarship generally accepts. History is always composed of 
pre-existing materials, and these materials are often woven by the 
writer into his narrative. It was not unnatural to suppose that the 
Bible histories were composed in the same manner, and that there were 
incorporated in them, along with documents and well-attested legends, 
some popular tales and current folk-lore. I had learned from Sir Henry 
Maine that the origin of law is a general custom; that custom is form¬ 
ulated in specific decrees, imperial or legislative, then the decrees are 
organized into a code.” 

—Lyman Abbott''s ''Reminiscences ” 4-60-1. 

Abbott was for six years a practicing lawyer. He and his brothers— 
Austin and Benjamin, wrote several law-books, under the name of 
“Benauly,”— “Ben” (jamin), “Au” (stin), and “Ly” (man). 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS (1813-1861), Illinois 

STEPHEN A DOUGLAS’S PREDICTION 

“I was quite unwilHng to .enter into a treaty stipulation with any 
European power in respect to this continent, that we could not do in 
the future whatever our duty, interest, honor and safety might require 
in the course of events. I am not prepared to prescribe limits to the area 
over which democratic principles may safely spread. * * * You may 
make as many treaties as you please to fetter the hmits of this giant 
republic, and she will burst them all from her and her course will 
be onward to a limit which I do not venture to proscribe. * * * What is 
the use of your guarantee that you will never erect any fortifications in 
Central America, never annex, occupy or colonize any portion of that 
country? How do you know that you can avoid doing it? If you make 
the canal, I ask you if American citizens will not settle along its line; 
whether they wiU not build up towns at each terminus? And I ask you 
how many years you think will pass before you vill find the same neces¬ 
sity to extend your laws over your own kindred that you found in the 
case of Texas?” 

—Remarks made in the U. S. Senate, when negotiating the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty. Douglas thoH this country should not give a mortgage 
on the future. 

Douglas said he had a conversation with Sir Henry Bulwer. “I told 
him,” said Douglas, to Bulwer’s assertion that it was a fair treaty, “that 
it would be fair if they would add one word to the treaty, so that it would 
read that neither Great Britian nor the U. S. should ever occupy or 
hold dominion over Central America or Asia.” But answered he,—“You 
have no interest in Asia?” “No,” answered I, “And you have none in 
Central America.” 

THE COMMON LAW 

“The common law is a beautiful system, containing the wisdom and 
experience of ages. Like the people it rules and protected, it was simple 
and crude in its infancy, and became enlarged, improved and polished 
as the nation advanced in civilization, virtue and intelligence. Adapting 
itself to the condition and circumstances of the people and relying upon 
them for its administration, it necessarily improved as the condition of 
the people was elevated. * * * But if we are to be restricted to the common 
law as it was enacted at Forth James, rejecting all modifications and 
improvements which have been made by practice and statutes, we will 
find that system entirely inapplicable to our present conditions, for the 
simple reason that it is more than two hundred years behind the age. 
* * * rpjjQ inhabitants of this country always claimed the common law 
as their birthright, and at an early period established it as the basis of 
their jurisprudence. Slight changes and modifications were found 
necessary, and consequently adopted by common consent from time 
to time to adapt it to our own peculiar institutions and the habits 
and customs of the people. These changes, modifications and customs 
having for a long course of years been acquiesced in by the people and 
sanctioned by the courts, have acquired the force of law and become 
incorporated into and made part of the common law of the land. The 
legislation of the territory and of our state was adopted with reference 
to the law as it then existed in the country.” 

—In Penny, v. Little, 3 Scammon's Reports, 301. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


243 


“Within ten years,” says Clark E. Carr, in his Life of Douglas, p. 2, 
“after Douglas walked into Winchester, Ill., a friendless boy of 20, with 
37K cents in his pocket (1833), he was admitted to the bar (1834), 
immediately becoming a successful lawyer; had been a member of the 
Ill. Legislature (1836); had been Prosecuting-Attorney (1835); had been 
Register of the Land Office at Springfield (1837); had been Secretary of 
State of Ill. (1840); had been Judge of the Supreme Court of Ill., pre¬ 
siding upon the bench (1841-3); was on his way to Washington to take his 
seat in the Lower House of Congress to which he had been elected (1842). 
When his congressional term expired, he was re-elected, and then re¬ 
elected again, each time by increased majorities. When about to enter 
upon his 3rd term in the House, he was elected to the U. S. Senate for 
six years (1846); was re-elected for another term, practically without 
opposition. Six years later he was confronted by Lincoln in the great 
debates (1858); he was victorious, and was re-elected to a 3rd term; 
upon this he served but little over 2 years, when he died, at 48 years of 
age.” 

TAUNTED SEWARD’S “HIGHER LAW” 

Debating with Seward in the U. S. Senate, Douglas exclaimed: “Your 
oath to support the Constitution binds you to every line, word and syl¬ 
lable of the instrument. You have no right to say that any given clause 
is in violation of the Divine law, and that, therefore, you will not observe 
it. The man who disobeys any one clause on the pretext that it vio¬ 
lates the Divine law, violates his oath of office.” 

In debate with Lincoln he said: 

“Sustain the Constitution of my country as our fathers have made it. 
I will yield obedience to the laws, whether I like them or not, as I find 
them on the statute book. I will sustain the judicial tribunals and 
constituted authorities in all matters within their jurisdiction as de¬ 
fined by the Constitution.” 

But in the dark days of 1861, altho Ill. had voted against him heavily* 
in the Presidential contest, he returned to something like idolatry of 
the son of whom she had always been proud when he came back to her 
with these inspiring words of patriotic fervor upon his bps: 

“When we shall have again a country with a U. S. flag floating over 
it and respected on every inch of American soil, it will be time enough 
to ask who had brought aU this upon us. It is a sad task to discuss 
questions so fearful as civil war, but sad as it is, bloody and disastrous 
as I expect it will be, I express it as my conviction before God that it is 
the duty of every American citizen to rally around the flag of his country. 
Every man must be for the U. S. or against it. There can be no neutrals 
in this war, only patriots and traitors.” 

TILT WITH JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 

Mr. Adams: “I never said that our title was good to the Rio del 
Norte from the mouth to its source.” 

Mr. Douglas: “I know nothing of the gentleman’s mental reservations. 
If he means, by his denial, to place the whole emphasis on the qualifi¬ 
cations that he did not claim that river as the boundary 'from its mouth 
to its source,' I shall not dispute with him on that point. But if he 
wishes to be understood as denying that he ever claimed the Rio del 
Norte, in general terms, as our boundary under the Louisiana treaty, I 
can furnish him with an official document, over his own signature, which 
he will find very embarrassing and exceedingly difficult to explain. I 
allude to his famous dispatch as secretary of state, in 1819, to Don Onis, 
the Spanish minister. I am not certain that I can prove his handwriting, 
for the copy I have in my possession I find printed in the American Satet 


244 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Papers, published by order of Congress. In that paper he not only 
claimed the Rio del Norte as our boundary but he demonstrated the 
validity of the claim by a train of facts and arguments which rivet con¬ 
viction on every impartial mind and defy refutation.” 

Mr. Adams: “I wrote that dispatch as secretary of state, and en¬ 
deavored to make out the best case I could for my own country, as it 
was my duty; but I utterly deny that I claimed the Rio de Norte as our 
boundary in its full extent. I only claimed it a short distance up the river, 
and then diverged northward some distance from the stream.” 

Mr Douglas: “Will the gentleman specify the point at which his 
line left the river?” 

Mr. Adams: “I never designated the point.” 

Mr. Douglas: “Was it above Matamoras?” 

Mr. Adams: “I never specified any particular place.” 

Mr. Douglas: “I am well aware that the gentleman never specified 
any point of departure for his northward line, which, he now informs us, 
was to run a part of the way on the east side of that river; for he claimed 
the river as the boundary in general terms, without any qualifications. 
But his present admission is sufficient for my purposes, if he will only 
specify the point from which he then understood or now understands 
that his line was to have diverged from the river. I have heard of this 
line before, and know with reasonable certainty its point of departure. 
It followed the river to a place near the highland—certainly more than 
100 miles above Matamoras; consequently, if we adopt that line as our 
present boundary, it will give us Point Isabel and General Taylor’s 
camp opposite Matamoras, and every inch of ground upon which an 
American soldier has ever placed his foot since the annexation of Texas 
to the Union. Hence my solicitude to extract an answer from the vener¬ 
able gentleman (then 72—two years before his death) to interrogatory 
whether his line followed the river any distance above Matamoras, and 
•hence, I apprehend, the cause of my failure to procure a response to that 
question. If he had responded to my inquiry, his answer would have 
furnished a triumphant refutation of all the charges which he and his 
friends have made against the President for ordering the army of occupa¬ 
tion to its present position. I am not now to be diverted from the real 
point in controversy by a discussion of the question whether the Rio del 
Norte was the boundary to its source. My present object is to repel the 
calumnies which have been urged against our government, to place our 
country in the right and the enemy in the wrong, before the civilized 
world, according to the truth and justice of the case. I have exposed these 
calumnies by reference to the acts and admissions of our accusers, by 
which they have asserted our title to the full extent that we have taken 
possession. I have shown that Texas always claimed the Rio del Norte 
as her boundary during the existence of the republic, and that Mexico 
on several occasions recognized it as such in the most direct and solemn 
manner. The President ordered the army no farther than Congress 
had extended our laws. In view of these facts, I leave it to the candor 
of every honest man whether the executive did not do his duty, and 
nothing but his duty, when he ordered the army to the Rio del Norte. 
Should he have folded his arms, and allowed our citizens to be murdered 
and our territory to be invaded with impunity? Have we not forborne 
to act, either offensively or defensively, until our forbearance is construed 
into cowardice, and is exciting contempt from those toward whom we 
have exercised our magnanimity? We have a long list of grievances, a 
long catalogue of wrongs to be avenged. The war has commenced; 
blood has been shed; our territory invaded; all the act of the enemy.” 

—From debate in the House of Representatives, in May, 18^6, on 

the Mexican War. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


245 


SCHOULER’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“Douglas had a small compact frame, whence issued a surprisingly 
stentorian voice, and his type of eloquence at once startled the House 
of Representatives by its novelty. As he warmed up in speech, his 
grave face became convulsed, his gesticulation frantic, and, while roaring 
and lashing about with energy, he would strip off his cravat and unbutton 
his waistcoat to save himself from choking, until his whole air and aspect 
as he stood at his desk was that of a half-naked pugilist hurling defiance 
at the presiding officer. But all this gave his person that picturesqueness 
which goes halfway towards making one a figure in public life.” 

—4 Schouler^s U. S. History, Jf.52. 

PATRIOTISM 

“Patriotism emanates from the heart; it fills the soul; it inspires the 
whole man with a devotion to his country’s cause, and speaks and acts 
the same language. America wants no* friends, acknowledges the fidelity 
of no citizen, who, after war is declared, condemns the justice of her 
cause and sympathizes with her enemies.” 

—From speech ^On the Boundary between Texas and U. Sd 

JAMES FORD RHODES ON DOUGLAS 

“His first political speech gained him the title of the ‘Little Giant’; 
the name was intended to imply the union of small physical with great 
intellectual stature. Yet he was not a student of books, altho a close 
observer of men. He lacked refinement of manner; was careless of 
his personal appearance, and had none of the art and grace that go to 
make up the cultivated orator. (John Quincy Adams at his appearance 
in the House, as his celebrated diary records) But Douglas took on quickly 
the character of his surroundings, and in Washington society he soon 
learned the ease of a gentleman and acquired the bearing of a man of 
the world. He was a great friend of the material development of the 
West, and especially of his own State, having broad views of the future 
growth of his section of the country. He vied with Cass in the dislike 
of England; believed in the manifest destiny of the U. S.; thought that 
conditions might arise under which it would become our bounden duty 
to acquire Cuba, Mexico, and Central America. He was called the 
representative of young America, and his supporters antagonized Cass 
as the candidate of old-fogyism. His adherents were aggressive and for 
months had made a vigorous canvass on his behalf. A Whig journal 
(N. Y. Tribune) ventured to remind Douglas that vaulting ambition over¬ 
leaps itself, but added, ‘Perhaps the little judge never read Shakespeare, 
and does not think of this’.”— 1 Rhodes History of the U. S., pp. 24.Ji.-5. 

WHY DOUGLAS FAILED 

“He failed of the highest fame and of the affectionate regard of pos¬ 
terity because he lacked the insight into moral questions and the political 
idealism which springs therefrom, which the statesman ranked among 
the immortals must always have. Although he always wore the party 
name and ranked himself under the party banner of Democracy, a true 
Democrat, in the larger sense of the word, Douglas was not. The brother¬ 
hood of man, the federation of the world, the sanctity of natural rights, 
were ideas foreign to his mind and thought. Lincoln, who never bore the 
name of Democrat, Trumbull, who repudiated it when it bore the con¬ 
notation of pro-slaveryism, were really Democrats, but not Douglas. 
His strongest political belief was in nationalism—patriotic and sincere 


246 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


nationalism—^but nationalism imperialistic and almost Chauvinist. 
He believed in autonomy for American communities; he cared but little 
what became of the rest of the world save as it might feed America’s 
greatness. His strongest impress, perhaps, therefore, was made on the 
Democrats in name, who voted with him and for him, and whose general 
practical cast of thought he expressed and illustrated in action.” 

—Edward Osgood Brown, Justice of 111. Appellate Court, 6 Gt. Am. 

Lawyers, 518-19. 

JUSTIFICATION OF JACKSON’S COURSE 

“But, sir, for the purposes of General Jackson’s justification, I care 
not whether his proceedings were legal or illegal, constitutional or un¬ 
constitutional, with or without precedent, if they were necessary for the 
salvation of the city. And I care as little whether he observed all the 
rules and forms of court, and technicalities of the law, which some gentle¬ 
men seem to consider the perfection of reason and the essence of wisdom. 
There was but one form necessary on that occasion, and that was to 
point cannon and destroy the enemy. The gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Barnard) to whose speech I have had occasion to refer so frequently, 
has informed us that his bill is unprecedented. I have no doubt this 
remark is technically true according to the most approved forms. I 
presume no case can be found on record, or traced by tradition, where 
a fine imposed on a general for saving his country at the peril of his life 
and reputation has ever been refunded. Such a case would furnish a 
choice page in the history of any country.” 

— Doglas’s speech at Washington. 

The bill passed both houses of Congress, and received the approval 
of the President. This was in 1844.— The Author. 

Jackson and Douglas met soon after at a barbacue given by the 
Democrats at Nashville, Tenn. Said Jackson: 

“Are you the Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, who delivered a speech in Con¬ 
gress last winter on the bill to reimburse me the fine Judge Hall imposed 
on me?” 

“I made a speech on the bill,” was the modest reply. 

“Then take a seat beside me on this lounge. I want to thank you; 
these other gentlemen can wait.” And then the Old Hero told Douglas 
how that speech had removed the only doubt that had ever oppressed 
his mind, and made smooth his pathway to the grave, (he died that year, 
1845); that his friends, good lawyers, had always contended that he had 
violated the Constitution of his country, though it was admitted it was 
necessary to save the city. “I never could understand it,” he continued; 
“It was a mystery to me, and I was in great doubt until I read your speech, 
completely vindicating my action and setting my mind at rest. I have 
it here preserved between the leaves of the Bible. Young man, I thank 
you. You have given me happiness.” Douglas’s eyes were suffused with 
tears, his heart was filled with emotion and he was incapable of utter¬ 
ance. He could only press the old hero’s hand, and this was the only 
meeting and parting of Jackson and Douglas.” 

—Essays of Savoyard, 260-62. 

AGAINST REPUDIATION BY ILLINOIS 

“The State of Illinois acted nobly, though it was poor. It had borrowed 
money hke Pennsylvania for the purpose of carrying out internal improve¬ 
ments. When the inhabitants of rich Pennsylvania set the example of 
repudiation, many of the poorer States wished to follow in their foot¬ 
steps. As every householder had a vote, it was easy, if they were dis¬ 
honest, to repu^ate their debts. A convention was called at Springfield, 
the Capital, and the repudiation ordinance was offered to the meeting. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


247 


It was about to be adopted, when it was stopped by Stephen A. Douglas, 
He was lying sick at his hotel, when he desired to be taken to the conven¬ 
tion. He was carried on a mattress, for he was too weak to walk, lying 
on his back, he wrote the following resolution, which he offered as a 
substitute for the repudiation ordinance: 

“ ‘Resolved that Illinois will be honest, although she never pays a 
cent,’ The resolution touched the honest sentiment of every ^member 
of the convention, and was adopted with enthusiasm. The canal bonds 
immediately rose. Capital and immigration flowed into the State; and 
Illinois is now one of the most prosperous States in America. She has 
more miles of railway than any of the other States. Her broad prairies 
are one great grain field, and are dotted over with hundreds of thousands 
of peaceful, happy homes. This is what honesty does.” 

—Samuel Smiles in ^Duty,' 70. 

JUDGE ORRIN C. CARTER ON DOUGLAS 

‘‘Douglas passed the examination for admission to the bar before he 
was twenty-one. From 1834, the year of his admission, and 1841 when 
he became a member of the Ill. Supreme Court, he appeared in twelve 
cases, reported in 2nd and 3rd Ill. Reports. When he became a judge of 
the Supreme Court, he was less than twenty-eight years of age, and had 
not been admitted quite seven years. He wrote twenty-two opinions, 
while a member of that court, in the 4th, 5th and 6th Ill. Reports. There 
was little in any of these cases that tested his capacity as a jurist; enough, 
however, to justify the conclusion that had he given his life unreservedly 
to the legal profession he would have been known as an eminent lawyer 
and judge. 

“He resigned as judge, after a little over two years on the bench, to 
run for Congress in June, 1843. It seems he appeared in but three cases 
before that tribunal, after he left the Supreme Bench. A public prosecutor 
before twenty-two, leading counsel in some of the most important cases 
heard in the State, during the next few years, a Supreme Court Judge 
at twenty-seven, Douglas’s career at the Illinois bar has few parallels 
for brilliancy in the annals of history. He was shrewd, keen, analytical, 
bold and aggressive; a quick and ready debater, capable of thinking as 
well on his feet as after deliberation; marvelously suggestive and fertile 
as to resources. He rarely cited historical precedents, except from 
American politics. In that field his knowledge was comprehensive and 
accurate. Nobody knew when he read, yet he could refer to date, page, 
and volume with wonderful accuracy. He was without wit or humor; 
intensely practical; in no sense a dreamer or follower of ideals. He 
disregarded all the adornments of rhetoric.” 

—Orrin C. Carter, Judge Supreme Court of Illinois, J '’Proceedings 
Mississippi Valley Hist. Ass’n\ for 1910-11, pp. 212-21f.O. 

HENRY WATTERSON ON DOUGLAS 

“Stephen Arnold Douglas was the Charles James Fox of American 
politics. He was not a gambler as Fox was. But he went the other gaits 
and was possessed of a sweetness of disposition which made him, like 
Fox, loved where he was personally known. No one could resist the 
hon ’homie of Douglas. He was a Green Mountain boy. He was born in 
Vermont. As Seargent Prentiss had done, he migrated beyond the Alle- 
ghanies before he came of age, settling in Illinois as Prentiss had settled 
in M^ississippi to grow up into a typical Westerner as Prentiss into a 
typical Southerner. * * * Had Judge Douglas lived he would have 

been Mr. Lincoln’s main reliance in Congress. As a debater his resources 
and powers were rarely equaled and never surpassed. His personality, 


248 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


whether in debate or private conversation, was attractive in the highest 
degree. He possessed a full, melodious voice, convincing fervor and ready 
wit. He had married for his second wife the reigning belle of the National 
Capital, a great-niece of Mrs. Madison, whose very natural amibtions 
quickened and spurred his own. * * * jje has now lain in his 

grave nearly sixty years. Upon the legislation of his time, his name was 
writ in water and then in blood. He received less than his desert in life, 
and the historic record has scarcely done justice to his merit. He was as 
great a party leader as Clay. He could hold his own with Webster and 
Calhoun. He died a very poor man, though his opportunity for enrich¬ 
ment by perfectly legitimate means were many. It is enough to say 
that he lacked busineess instinct and set no value on money; scrupulously 
upright in his official dealings; holding his Senatorial duties above all 
price and beyond the suspicion of dirt. Touching the matter which in¬ 
volved a certain outlay in the winter of 1861, he laughingly said to me: 
‘I haven’t the wherewithal to pay for a bottle of whisky, and shall have 
to borrow of Arnold Harris the wherewithal to take me home.’ 

“His wife was a glorious creature. Early one morning, calling at their 
home to see Judge Douglas, I was ushered into the Library, where she 
was engaged setting things to rights. My entrance took her by surprise. 

I had often seen her in full ball room regalia and in a becoming out-of-door 
costume, but as, in gingham gown and white apron, she turned, a little 
startled by my sudden appearance, smiles and blushes, in spite of herself, 

I thought I had never seen any woman so beautiful before. She married 
again the lover, whom gossip said, she had thrown over to marry Judge 
Douglas, and the story went, that her second marriage was not very 
happy.”— 1 Henry Watterson's Autobiography, 

REPLY TO FESSENDEN 

“I wish the Senator from Maine (Mr. Fessenden) who delivered his 
maiden speech here to-night, and who made a great many sly stabs at 
me, had informed himself upon the subject before he repeated all his 
groundless assertions. I can excuse him, for the reason that he has been 
but a few days, and having enlisted under the banner of the abolition 
confederates, was unwise and simple enough to believe what they had 
published could be relied on as stubborn facts. He may be an innocent 
victim. I hope he can have the excuse of not having investigated the 
subject. I am willing to excuse him on the ground that he did not know 
what he was talking about, and it is the only excuse which I can make for 
him. I will say, however, that I do not think he was required by his 
loyalty to the abolitionists to repeat every disreputable innuendo about 
a Northern man with Southern principles. Ay, sir, I say foul insinuation. 
Did not the Senator from Massachusetts who first dragged it into this 
debate wish to have the public to understand that I was a Northern 
man with Southern principles? Was that the allusion? If it was, he 
availed himself of a cant phrase in the public mind, in violation of the 
truth of history. I know of but one man in this country who ever made 
it a boast that he was ‘a Northern man with Southern principles,’ and 
he was (turning to Sumner) your candidate for President in 1848.” 

The Kansas-Nebraska bill became a law, and the dogma of non-inter¬ 
vention was the central idea of the Democratic platform of 1856, upon 
which Buchanan and Breckenridge were elected President and Vice- 
President. But the Kansas-Nebraska bill did more; it vitalized the 
Republican party, and organized its future victory in 1860.— The Author. 


JOHN DUNNING, lord Ashburton (1731-1783), England 


LORD SHELBURNE AND COLONEL BARRE 

“I would add a word or two respecting my honorable friend below me 
(Colonel Barre). For the faithful and disinterested performance of his 
duty to this house, how has he been treated by some of his opponents? 
He has been called a dependent; I presume, alluding to the honor he 
enjoys in the friendship and intimacy of a certain noble lord, a member 
of the other house (Lord Shelburne). If that intimacy and friendship 
be a state of dependence, I am happy in classing myself among that noble 
lord’s dependents. I will assure those, who have alluded to what they 
call dependence accompanied with perfect freedom. It is true my honor¬ 
able friend has been honored with the noble lord’s friendship for upward 
of twenty years; but I think I know the frame of mind and disposition 
of my honorable friend too well to be persuaded that he would purchase 
any man’s intimacy upon any terms short of perfect equality and mutual 
confidence; and I think I may likewise add, that if any person should 
attempt to purchase the noble lord’s friendship by mean or improper 
concessions, there is not a man on earth would more readily see thru 
or despise it. I know the noble lord to be a great private as well as public 
character. I know my honorable friend to possess a spirit of true inde¬ 
pendence. I am persuaded of the noble lord’s great and acknowledged 
talents as a senator and a politician, and I can add, great as he may 
appear in a public light, that his private character is no less amiable and 
worthy of general admiration.” 

Says Chas. James Fox: “Dunning, in 1778 (then 47), was the greatest 
practicing lawyer then alive in England.” 

Dunning was retained in a criminal conversation case for the defendant, 
and to prove adultery, the lady’s maid had been called, and had deposed 
to having seen, the defendant in bed with his mistress. When it came 
Dunning’s turn to cross-examine, he desired the witness, in a stern tone, 
to take off her bonnet, that he might have a full view of her face, and 
convince himself by her looks whether she was' speaking the truth. 
Nothing daunted as she was a bold one, and handsome, she unhesitat¬ 
ingly removed her bonnet and Dunning began: 

“Are you sure it was not your master that you saw in that conjugal 
capacity?” 

“Perfectly sure;” 

“What! do you pretend to say you can be certain, when the head 
only appeared about the bed-clothes, and that enveloped in a night¬ 
cap?” 

“Quite certain.” 

“You have often found occasion then to see your master in his night¬ 
cap?” 

“Yes, very frequently.” 

“Now, young woman, I ask you, upon your oath, does your master 
occasionally go to bed with you?” 

“Oh!” answered Toinette, nothing daunted, “that trial does not come 
on today, Mr. Slauberchops.”— Welesby's Lives of Eminent Judges, 559. 


Says Nathaniel Wraxall: “He neither delighted nor entertained his 
hearers; but he subdued them by his powers of argumentative ratioci¬ 
nation, which have rarely been excelled.” 


250 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


DUNNING’S REPLY TO MANSFIELD 

There is a celebrated reply in circulation of Mr, Dunning’s to a remark 
of Lord Mansfield’s, who curtly exclaimed of one of his legal propositions: 
“Oh, if that be law, Mr. Dunning, I may burn my law-books.” “Better 
read them, my lord,” was the sarcastic and appropriate rejoinder. 

— Chas. Phillips^ * Curran and His Contemporaries,’ 4-8- 

WRAXALL ON DUNNING’S UGLY APPEARANCE 

“Never, perhaps, did nature inclose a more illuminated mind in a body 
of meaner and more abject appearance. It is difficult to do justice to 
the peculiar species of ugliness which characterized his person and figure 
though he did not labor under any absolute deformity of shape or limb; 
a degree of infirmity, and almost of debility or decay, in his _ organs 
augmented the effect of his other bodily misfortunes; even his voice 
was so husky and choked with phlegm that it refused utterance to the 
sentiments which were dictated by his superior intelligence. (He died 
at 52.) * * * But all these imperfections and defects of configuration 

were obliterated by the ability which he displayed. In spite of the 
monotony of his tones, and his total want of animation, as well as grace, 
yet so powerful was reason when fiowing from his lips, that every mirrmur 
became hushed, and every ear attentive. It seemed, nevertheless, the 
acute sophistry of a lawyer, rather than the speech of a man of the world, 
or the eloquence of a man of letters and education. Every sentence, 
though admirable in itself, yet resembled more the pleading of the bar 
than the oratory of the senate.” 


FUTURE OF THE PHILIPPINES 

“I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do 
not prophesy. The present is all absorbing to me, but I cannot bound 
my vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every 
red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided 
Filippino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future 
years, when the group of islands, under the impulse of the year just 
passed, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; 
a land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from 
savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch with 
the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of freedom, 
of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes and whose children 
and children’s children shall for ages hence bless the American Republic 
because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland, and set them in 
the pathway of the world’s best civilization.” 

—President William McKinley, before ^Home Market Club,’ Boston, 
Mass., Feb. 16, 1899. 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH (1745-1807), Connecticut 


THE COMMON LAW 

“The common law of England we are to pay great deference to, as being 
a general system of improved reason, and a source from which our prin- 
jurisprudence have been mostly drawn. The rules, however, 
which have not been made our own by adoption, we are to examine and 
so far vary from them as they may appear contrary to reason or unadapted 
to our local circumstances, the policy of our law, or simplicity of our 
practice.”— Wooster v. Parsons, Kirby’s Reports, 110, 117. 

“Any cause that is fit for any court to hear is fit for any lawyer to present 
on either side.”— Judge Ellsworth to Jeremiah Evarts. 


CHARGE TO GRAND JURY 

“Your duty may be deemed unpleasant, but it is too important not 
to be faithfully performed. To provide in the organization that reason 
shall prescribe laws, is of little avail, if passions are left to control them. 
Institutions without respect, laws violated with impunity, are, to a 
Republic, the symptoms and the seed of death. No transgression is 
too small, no transgressor too great, for animadversion. Happily for our 
laws, they are not written in blood, that we should blush to read them, 
or hesitate to execute them. They breathe the spirit of a parent, and 
expect the benefits of correction, not from severity but from certainty. 
Reforniation is never lost sight of, till depravity becomes, or is presumed 
to be, incorrigible. Imposed as restraints here are, not by the jealousy 
of usurpation, nor the capriciousness of insensibility, but as the aids 
of virtue, and guards to rights, they have a high claim to be rendered 
efficient. Nor is this claim more heightened by the purity of their source, 
and the mildness of their genius, than by the magnitude of the interests 
they embrace. The national laws are the national ligatures and vehicles 
of life. Though they pervade a country as diversified in its habits as it 
is vast in extent, yet they give to the whole harmony of interest and unity 
of design. They are the means by which it pleases Heaven to make of 
weak and discordant parts one great people, and to bestow upon them 
unexampled prosperity, and so long as America shall continue to have 
one will, organically expressed and enforced, must she continue to rise 
in opulence and respect. Let the man or combination of men who, from 
whatever motive, oppose partial to general will, and would disjoint their 
country to the sport of fortune, feed their impotence and error. Admon¬ 
ished by the fate of Republics which have gone^ before us, we should 
profit by their mistakes. Impetuosity in legislation, and instability in 
execution, are the rocks on which they perished. Against the former, 
indeed, we hold a security, which they were ignorant of, by a represent¬ 
ative instead of the aggregate, and by a distribution of the legislative 
power to maturing and balancing bodies, instead of the subjection of it 
to momentary impulse and the predominance of faction. Yet from the 
danger of inexecution we are not exempt. Strength of virtue is not alone 
sufficient, there must be strength of arm, or the experiment is hopeless. 
Numerous are the vices, and as obstinate the prejudices, and as daring 
as restless is the ambition, which perpetually hazard the national peace, 
and they certainly require that to the authority vested in the executive 
department there be added liberal confidence, and the increasing co¬ 
operation of all good citizens for its support. Let there be vigilance, 


252 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


constant diligence, and fidelity for the execution of laws, of laws made 
by all and having for their object the good of all. So let us rear an empire 
sacred to the rights of man and commend a governemnt of reason to 
the nations of the earth.” 

—Part of Charge to Grand Jury, at Savannah, Ga., 1796. Brown's 

Life of Ellsworth, 21t.6-7. 

WEBSTER GOT HIS IDEAS FROM ELLSWORTH 

Webster said he got his ideas of defending the Constitution, in his 
debate with Hayne and Calhoun, from Ellsworth’s two speeches before 
the Connecticut Convention, called to ratify the Constitution. 

— Brown's Life of Ellsworth, 175. 

POSITION IN ADOPTING CONSTITUTION 

“Ellsworth found time and energy to enter into the discussion of the 
four subjects over which the first Congress divided with the greatest 
heat. These were, the revenue, the seat of government, the debt, 
and the bank. He championed Hamilton’s bill for a tariff. 2nd,- he took 
an eastern stand for the permanent seat of government—on the Susque¬ 
hanna, as against any point further South—N. Y. as against Philadelphia. 
Was against the bill that finally passed, the trade between Hamilton and 
Jefferson to locate the Capital on the Potomac, in order to get a tariff 
revenue bill through and to assume by the government the State debts. 
Also favored Hamilton’s scheme for a bank.” 

— Brown's Life of Ellsworth, 20Jf-5. 

STANDING IN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 

‘‘Not more than two or three men can well be ranked above Ellsworth 
for true effectiveness in the Constitutional Convention.” 

— Wm. G. Brown's Life of Ellsioorth, 168. 

REBUKED SAMUEL CHASE ON BENCH 

‘‘Mr. Justice Chase was sometimes wanting in the proper respect 
for his associates, and given to browbeating counsel; and on one occasion, 
Ellsworth, deeply provoked, took a severe method to show him his place. 
The incident occurred when they two were sitting in a Circuit Court 
at Philadelphia. Jarred Ingersoll, of Philadelphia, of counsel in the cause, 
had hardly entered on his argument, when Judge Chase impatiently 
interrupted and told him that the point he was arguing was well settled 
and he need not argue it. Vexed and disconcerted, Ingersoll proceeded 
to a second head of the contention, only to be again interrupted, and told 
that he was wasting time. Mastering his anger, he began a third argu¬ 
ment; and the third time. Chase interrupted him. The indignant attorney 
folded up his notes and took his seat. Ellsworth took out his snuff-box, 
tapped it with his finger, and with plenty of emphasis said to Mr. Inger¬ 
soll: ‘The Court has expressed no opinion, sir, upon these points, and 
when it does, you will hear it from the proper organ of the court. You 
■will proceed, sir, and I pledge you my word, you shall not be interrupted 
again.’ (And he turned upon his overbearing associate a look that made 
him fairly quail in his seat.)”— Brown's Life of Ellsworth, 21^3. 

DEPRIVATIONS OF YOUTH 

‘‘Ellsworth walked each way as a young lawyer 10 miles to attend 
court. Studied for the ministry a year, four years after he began practice, 
at Hartford, Conn.; at 30 his docket contained as many as 1,000 cases. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


253 


Noah Webster, the lexicographer, who read law with him, in 1779, 
said Ellsworth, Wm. Samuel Johnson and Titus Hosmer were the ‘three 
mighties’ of the Connecticut bar. As a lawyer he achieved extraordinary 
success, amassing what was for his day a large fortune. Entered Yale 
in 1762, but graduated at Princeton, in 1766. Made judge of the Superior 
Court in 1784, and in 1785 became a member of the Supreme Court of 
Errors. Was chosen to represent Conn, with William Samuel Johnson 
and Roger Sherman, both 20 years his senior (he being but 42) as members 
of the Continental Congress in 1787, which met in Philadelphia. Madison 
and Wilson led the Nationalists, and Paterson, Lansing and Luther 
Martin the Federalists in the Convention. But Ellsworth was a com¬ 
promiser and brought order out of chaos. He was a master of details, 
and secured representation of the States in the Senate, each being entitled 
to one vote, and the provision whereby all money bills should originate 
in the House, and the provision that the lower house should be repre¬ 
sented on the basis of population. He was elected one of the first Senators 
of Conn., 1789-96, and as such drafted and defended the national judiciary 
bill, by which the system of the Federal Courts, almost as they are today, 
was enacted. He was specially and peculiarly fitted for that work, and 
he has, therefore, been called the ‘father of the national judiciary.’ 
In the Senate he was looked upon as Washington’s personal spokesman, 
as the leader of the administration party. He was appointed in 1796, 
upon the resignation of Chief Justice John Jay, Chief Justice of the U. S. 
Supreme Court. ‘Ellsworth,’ said Adams, ‘was the firmest pillar in Wash¬ 
ington’s administration in the Senate.’ ” 

HIS OPINIONS 

“His opinions reveal a thorough, comprehensive knowledge of legal 
precedents and principles in their full historic perspective. Indeed, his 
citations and references are remarkably copious and varied, considering 
his brevity. His terseness and point are characteristic. He cuts away 
all superfluous verbiage, avoids figures of speech, and seizing with 
Arm grasp the gist of the question, he states his conclusion in plain, 
clear, forcible words with no hesitation or uncertain tone. Far different 
in style was his associate, James Wilson. The latter, with that philosophic 
cast of mind natural to a Scotchman, would roll out his opinion in flow¬ 
ing, sonorous sentences, embellished with all the ornaments and erudition 
of the classroom. In the matter of argument there was also a striking 
contrast; Associate Justice James Iredell was noted for his close, logical 
reasoning, but Ellsworth would keep most of his mental processes to 
himself, and would express barely more than his conclusions, though at 
times in argumentative outline.” 

—Frank Gaylord Cook, Vol. 1, ^ Gt. Am. Lawyers,^ 307. 


THOMAS ADDIS EMMET (1764-1827), Ireland 

EXTORTED APOLOGY FROM PINKNEY 

In the great cause of the Nereide (9 Cranch, 398), Pinkney and Emmet 
were opposed to each other. The case involved a novel question of inter¬ 
national law—whether a neutral could lawfully lade his goods on board 
an armed vessel. Emmet was embarrassed by a contemporary decision of an 
opposite character on the point for which he contended by the English 
High Court of Admiralty, in the case of the “Fanny." The case at bar 
involved millions of dollars. Pinkney in his argument took occasion to 
say that Emmet was imprisoned in Fort George, Scotland, and released 
therefrom, on condition that he would leave England and Ireland for¬ 
ever. Emmet had severely criticised the English decision. Such was his 
hatred for England that he made some little comments upon her maritime 
laws. This gave Pinkney an opportunity to make the allusion above 
referred to. “It is natural,” said he, “that the gentleman, whose arm has 
been raised to rebellion against the British government and his own 
sovereign, and who, for his treason was confined for several years in an 
English prison, should dislike the laws he himself had broken, especially 
as there is an eternal interdict to his return to the land of his birth.” 
Emmet in his reply said: 

“And now, your Honors, I have done. I leave the further consideration 
of the case to my learned and distinguished associate, Mr. Dallas. But, 
before I take my seat, I ought, perhaps, in justice to myself, to make 
some reply to the personal allusions which my great opponent has deemed 
proper to make concerning myself; but this is a species of warfare in which 
it is my good fortune to have had little experience; it is one that I never 
waged. I am perfectly willing that my learned opponent shall have all 
the laurels he has sought to win in waging it. When I came to this 
country, I was a stranger, nay more, I was an exile from the land of my 
birth, as dear to me as the lifedrops in my heart, but no dearer than this 
glorious country of my adoption, in which I have found an asylum, and 
a home, and a welcome almost paternal; in whose courts of justice I 
have been warmly received as an advocate, from its bench and bar. 
Never, sir, until this day, have I experienced the least unkindness from 
my professional brethren. Your Honors, I appeal to you, have I done 
anything here today to merit a different treatment ? I came here imbued 
with the deepest respect, let me say reverence, for the learning and 
eloquence of Mr. Pinkney and he is the last man from whom I should 
have expected personal observations of the kind to which this Court, 
this bar, and this audience have just listened. It is true I was two years 
within the walls of an English prison, because I dared lift my voice in 
a Court of Justice, in behalf of my countrymen on their way to the 
scaffold and the halter, for the same acts of patriotism that made this 
great Republic all she is. Should my opponent taunt me to this? He 
whose grand and sweeping eloquence receives its beauty from his own 
burning patriotism, should sympathize with the victims of oppression 
wherever found. For whom I have no indignant words, for I know that'^ 
when a little reflection shall bring the events of this day before him, 
that generosity and chivalry which has ever made him a favorite in the 
court of foreign monarchs, and caused him to be loved at home, wili 
bring before him the injustice he did me today, with the regrets which 
his noble nature knows how to feel keenly. Besides, I have been taught, 
in early life never to return railing for railing. In conclusion, let me say 
that the gentleman has filled the highest office his country can bestow, 
at the Court of St. James, and that of the Emperor of Russia. Surely, 
he could not have lost his innate courtesy in those polished courts.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


255 


(At the conclusion of this speech, which placed a new wreath on the 
head of the “exile lawyer,” Pinkney rose and tendered him a beautiful 
and generous apology): 

“I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without doing justice to my 
honored and distinguished opponent. The manner in which Mr. Emmet 
has replied to my too hasty language, reproaches me for its for¬ 
bearance and urbanity, and could not fail to hasten the repentance 
which reflection would have produced, and which I am happy, on so 
public an occasion, of avowing'. I offer him a gratuitous and cheerful 
atonement; cheerful, because it puts me right with myself, and because 
it is tendered not to ignorance and presumption, but to the highest 
worth of intellect and morals, enhanced by such eloquence as few may 
hope to equal; to an interesting stranger, whom adversity has tried and 
affliction struck severely to the heart; to an exile whom any country 
might be proud to receive, and every man of generosity would be ashamed 
to offend.”— L. B. Proctor s, ^Lawyer and Client,’ 173-7. 

TORE FEATHERS FROM HIS PEN 

Mr. Emmet always in his exordium would hold a pen in one hand, 
and slowly tear the feathers from its side till all were torn away; he 
would then drop the pen and enter ardently into his argument, with an 
eloquence and a zeal that charmed all hearers. 

JOSEPH STORY’S IMPRESSION, 1807 

In 1807, Judge Story, then twenty-eight years of age, visited New York 
City, and thus speaks of Emmet, in a letter to a friend: 

“You have heard much of Emmet, the Irish counsellor. He is near¬ 
sighted, and wears a pendant glass, which he occasionally uses. His 
appearance is not that of an orator, and his voice is rather thick and 
guttural. I heard him a few moments only on a motion. * * * 

Emmet has certainly great reputation here as an advocate; and from 
this opinion being universal, I conclude that he awakens with inspiration 
of his subject, and rises as he proceeds. As a physiognomist, I should 
not pronounce him great, yet I think his countenance speaks mind; 
but it is comprehensiveness rather than vigor. Ogden Hoffman, Radcliffe, 
and Benson are the next in order; but I can say nothing of them.” Judge 
Story has already said of Harrison, in the same connection: “Harrison 
is doubtless the first at the bar. His air is modest, his manner easy, and 
his person rather short. His voice has no force, and I have been told 
that he is not eloquent as an advocate. The illustrious Hamilton is 
said to have pronounced him a very learned and able counsellor. I 
cannot, however, but be impressed that industry more than genius, 
steadiness of pursuit rather than original quickness, have formed and 
modeled that character.”— 1 Story’s Life and Letters, 11^5. 

GREATEST FORENSIC ORATOR IN UNION 

“Thomas Addis Emmet was not only the greatest forensic orator 
the United States has known, but he was also a learned, able, and most 
industrious lawyer.” 

— Chas. P. Daly, in 'Article on Chas. O’Connor, 13 Mag. Am. 

History {1885), 522. 

HIS EARLY PRACTICE IN N. Y. 

“Business flowed in and not long after liis arrival in N. Y. his profession 
produced him $10,000 to $15,000 a year. * * * His remarkable 

eloquence carried him at once to the very head of the New York Bar. 


256 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


He had the ready talent of successful and overawing reply. He won his 
cases by his vehement and impassioned oratory, as well as by his untiring 
study of the law.”— ^Warren's History of the American Bar.' 

S. G. GOODRICH’S TRIBUTE 

“Thomas Addis Emmet, a native of Cork, in Ireland, was born in 1764. 
He was one of the committee of the Society of United Irishmen, and was 
involved in the unfortunate rebellion of'1798. His great learning, his 
extraordinary talents, his powerful eloquence, soon gave him a place 
among the first lawyers of the country. He died in 1827.” 

— 8 . G. Goodrich's * Recollections of a Life-Time.' 72. 

SKETCH OF EMMET 

Thos. Addis Emmet (1764-1827), brother of the famous Irish patriot, 
Robert Emmet (1778-1805), was the son of a Dublin physician, and 
studied arts at Trinity College, Dublin, and medicine at the University 
of Edinburgh. Called to the Dublin bar in 1791, he became a leader of 
the “Umted Irishmen,” and suffered imprisonment in Scotland for two 
years. After the treaty of Amiens, he removed to France, and thence 
to New York, where he rose to be attorney-general of the State (1812). 
Amongst his publications are “Pieces of Irish History,” written during 
captivity in Scotland.— See Memoir hy Charles G. Haynes, 1829. 


GROVER CLEVELAND ON SUCCESS AT THE BAR 

“If I were to tender any advice to young men in the legal profession, 
or contemplating such a career, I think I could not refrain from asking 
them to dismiss from their minds the idea that the practice of the law 
is made up in an important degree of oratory and eloquent addresses 
before courts and juries. No one should enter this profession who is 
not prepared to do very hard, continuous and often irksome work. I 
shall follow this advice by saying that there is no mistake about another 
fact, to wit; In the practice of the law, as in everything else, honesty 
and frank, fair dealing is not only enjoined by good morals, but is the 
best policy. It is a delusion to suppose that the noble profession of the 
law can be faithfully pursued or successfully practiced by trickery and 
overreaching subterfuges.”— To the N. Y. Herald, March 8, 1891. 



LORD ELDON, sir John scott (1751-1838), England 
WANTED TO DO RIGHT 

“Party I don’t mind much; 'posterity not a great deal; for of this trans¬ 
action, in all its particulars, it will be as little informed in matter of fact 
as it IS in most others; but to do the thing that is right, is really matter 
of most anxious concern with me.” 

The above was concerning Napoleon’s deportation to St. Helena, in 
1815. Ackroyd v. Smithson, in 1788, and the Clitheroe Election case were 
the foundation of his fortunes; member of the House of Commons for 
17 years; Solicitor and Attorney General, and Chief Justice of Common 
Pleas; member of the House of Lords; and finally, in 1801, Lord 
Chancellor, which position he held for 26 years, and for 20 years, was in 
everything but name. Prime Minister. He once held a case under advise¬ 
ment for more than 20 years, and even then could be spurred to a decis¬ 
ion only by Lord Brougham’s bringing the matter to the attention of 
Parliament.— Author. 

HIS REASON FOR DOUBTING 

“I know it has been an opinion—a maxim—a principle—aye, an honest 
principle, on which several of those who have presided in this Court 
have acted, that a judge is to know nothing more than counsel think 
proper to communicate to him relative to the case. But, for myself, 
I have thought and acted otherwise: and I know, yes, I would swear 
upon my oath, that if I had given judgment on such information and 
statements only as I have received from counsel on both sides, I should 
have disposed of numerous estates to persons who had no more title to 
them, than I have, and, believe me, that I feel comfort in that thought— 
a comfort of which all the observations on my conduct can never rob me.” 
—7 Lives of the Lord Chancellors, 828. 

‘‘READING COKE—LITTLETON —LIKE CLIMBING A HIGH 

HILL” 

“Whilst you are with Abbot (afterwards Lord Tenterden), find time 
to read Coke on Littleton again and again. If it be toil and labor to you, 
and it will be so, think as I do when I am climbing up to Swyer or to 
Westhill, that the world will be before you when the toil is over; for so 
the law world will be, if you make yourself complete master of that book.” 
—Advice to J. W. Farrar, on the study of law, 1807. 1 Twiss’ 

Life of Eldon, 301. 

Sidney Smith, in York Cathedral, 1824, said in a sermon, “Fifty 
years ago, the person (Eldon) at the head of his profession, the greatest 
lawyer in England, perhaps in the world, stood in this church, on such 
and such an occasion as the present, as obscure, as unknown, and as 
much doubting of his future prospects as the humblest individual of the 
profession present.”—7 Lives of the Ld. Chan., 52. 

ACKROYD V. SMITHSON 

“When about 30 years of age, and after being at the bar 3 or 4 years, 
then John Scott, was retained and argued Ackroyd v. Smithson, involving 
the rights of his client to real estate under a will. He won, and as he left 


258 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the court, a solicitor touched him on the shoulder, and said, ‘Young man, 
your bread and butter is cut for Life.’ But the story does not stop here. 
In the Chancellor’s Court at Lancaster, a brief was given Scott, in a 
cause in which the interest of his client would oblige him to support, 
by argument, before Dunning (Lord Ashburton), the reverse of that which 
had been decided by the decree in Ackroyd v. Smithson. When Scott 
had stated to the Chancellor the point he was going to argue, Dunning 
said, ‘Sit down, young man.’ As Scott did not immediately comply, 
the judge repeated, ‘Sit down, sir. I won’t hear you.’ He then sat down. 
Dunning said, ‘I believe your name is Scott, sir?’ The young man, said 
it is. Upon which Dunning went on: ‘Mr. Scott, did not you argue 
that case of Ackroyd v. Smithson?’ Scott said that he did argue it. 
Then said Dunning, ‘Mr. Scott, I have read your argument in that case, 
and I defy you or any man in England to answer it. I won’t hear you.’ ” 
—1 Twiss' Life of Eldon, 71-2. 

Advice to Young Lawyer: “If you wish to live at the bar you 
must live like a hermit and work ifke a horse.”— Lord Eldon. 


JOHN J. INGALLS’ ADVICE TO YOUNG LAWYER 

“How to attain eminence and fortune in the practice of the law. So 
far as I know there is no prescription for fame or fortune. A man may 
deserve both and obtain neither, or he may deserve neither, and obtain 
both. The only way to be successful, so far as my observation goes, is 
to succeed.”— Letter to N. Y. Herald, March 8, 1891. 


WILLIAM CALL’S RECEIPT FOR LAWYER’S SUCCESS 

“Certainly there is only one thing for a young lawyer to do, and that 
is to continue his studies and discipline his mind thoroughly by thought 
and analysis; to be perfectly upright in his business transactions and care¬ 
fully attentive to every employment he accepts.” 

— To N. Y. Herald, March 8, 1891. 


HAMILTON’S TRIBUTE TO CHIEF JUSTICE PARSONS 

“Mr. Parsons, pray let me ask you one thing. The point I made 
(describing it), was suggested to me only after much study of the case, 
and then almost by accident, but I thought it very strange you were 
fully prepared for it, and I must submit; but I was a good deal surprised 
at it; and what I want to know is, whether you had anticipated that 
point?” “Not in the least,” was the answer, “but so long ago as when I 
was studying with Judge Trowbridge, the question was suggested to me, 
and I made a brief of the authorities, which I happened to have brought 
with me, and I found the books in Judge Ellsworth’s library here in 
Hartford, Conn.” — Par.<i 07 i\>i ^Memoirs,' 137-8. 






ELLENBOROUGH, LORD, Edward law (1750-1818), Eng. 
LITERARY CRITICISM—NOT LIBEL 

Ellenborough nobly maintained a freedom of literary criticism. Sir 
John Knight, a silly author, brought an action against respectable book¬ 
sellers for a bxirlesque upon certain foolish Travels, which he had given 
the world, relying upon a recent decision of Lord Ellenborough, in Tabbert 
V. Tipper. Lord Ellenborough in his holding said: 

“In that case, Tabbert v. Tipper, the defendant had falsely accused 
the plaintiff of publishing what he had never published. Here the 
supposed libel only attacks those of which Sir John Carr is the avowed 
author; and one writer, in exposing the absurdities and errors of another, 
may make use of ridicule, however poignant. Ridicule is often the 
fittest instrument which can be employed for such a purpose. If the 
reputation or pecuniary interests of the party ridiculed suffer, it is damnum 
ahseque injuria. Perhaps the plaintiff’s ‘Tour in Scotland’ is now un¬ 
salable; but is he to be indemnified by receiving a compensation in damages 
from the person who may have opened the eyes of the public to the bad 
taste and inanity of his composition? Who prized the works of Sir 
Robert Filmer after he had been refuted by Mr. Locke? But shall it 
be said that he might have maintained an action for defamation against 
the great philosopher, who was laboring to enlighten and to ameliorate 
mankind? We really must not cramp observations upon authors and 
their works. Every man who pubhshes a book commits himself to the 
judgment of the public, and any one may comment upon his performance. 
He may not only be refuted, but turned into ridicule, if his blunders 
are ridiculous. Reflection on personal character is another thing. Show 
me any attack on the plaintiff’s character unconnected with his author¬ 
ship and I shall be as ready to protect him; but I cannot hear of malice 
from merely laughing at his works. The works may be very valuable, 
for anything I know to the contrary, but others have a right to pass 
judgment upon them. The critic does a great service to society who 
exposes yapid as well as mischievous publications. He checks the dis¬ 
semination of bad taste and saves his fellow-subjects from wasting their 
time and money upon trash. If a loss arises to the author, it is a loss 
without injury; it is a loss which the party must sustain; it is a loss of 
fame and profit to which he never was entitled. Nothing can be conceived 
more threatening to the liberty of the press than the species of action 
before the court. We ought to resist an attempt against fair and free 
criticism at the threshold.” — Verdict was given for defendants, Carr v. 
Hood, et al., 1 Camj), 355. 

EPIGRAM ON EDMOND BURKE ^ 

Law had the credit of making the celebrated epigram upon the leader 
of the Warren Hastings impeachment, in which Law was leading counsel 
for the defendant: 

“Oft have we wonder’d that on Irish ground. 

No poisonous reptile has e’er yet been found; 

Revealed the secret stands of Nature’s work— 

She saved her venom to produce her Burke.” 

— CampbeWs Lives, p. 1^1. {But it is said to have been composed 
by Dallas, another counsel for the defense.) 


260 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAIVYERS 


A PRAYER—COMPOSED BY LORD ELLENBOROUGH 

“O God, heavenly Father by whose providence and goodness all things 
were made and have their being, and from Whom all the blessings and 
comforts of this life, and all the hopes and expectations of happiness 
hereafter, are, through the merits of our beloved Savior, derived to us, 
Thy sinful creatures, I humbly offer up my most grateful acknowledg¬ 
ments for Thy divine goodness and protection, constantly vouchsafed 
to me through the whole course of my life, particularly indulging to me 
such faculties of mind and body, and such means of health and strength, 
as have hitherto enabled me to obtain many great worldly comforts 
and advantages. Grant me, O Lord, I humbly beseech Thee, of these 
Thy manifold blessings, together with a steadfast disposition and purpose 
to use them for the benefit of my fellow-creatures, and Thy honor and 
glory. And grant, O Lord, that no decay or diminution of these faculties 
and means of happiness may excite in my mind any dissatisfied or de¬ 
sponding thoughts or feelings, but that I may always place my firm trust 
and confidence in Thy divine goodness; and whether the blessings here¬ 
tofore indulged to me shall be continued or cease, and whether Thou 
shalt give them or take them away, I may still, in humble obedience to 
Thy will, submit myself in all things with patience and resignation to 
the dispensations of Thy divine providence, humbly and gratefully 
blessing, praising and magnifying Thy holy name forever and ever. 
Amen.”— Composed while at Paris, in 1817. 

EMPLOYED AS A SURGEON 

To the surgeon in the witness box who said, “I employ myself as a 
surgeon,” Ellenborough retorted: “But does anybody else employ 
you as a surgeon?” 

THE BOOK OF NATURE 

Said Randall Jackson, in a fiowery harrangue: “My Lords, in the book 
of nature it is written—” 

“Be kind enough, Mr. Jackson,” interposed Ellenborough, “to mention 
the page from which you are about to quote.” 

A PLEASURE TO HEAR ARGUMENT 

Preston, the great conveyancer, who had tired out the court with a 
dreary speech, toward the close of the day asked their lordships when it 
would meet their pleasure to hear the remainder of his argument. Ellen¬ 
borough replied, with a sigh: “We are bound to hear you, and we will 
endeavor to give you our individual time on Friday next; but as for plea¬ 
sure, that, sir, has been long out of the question.” 

^ “THE COURT IS WITH YOU” 

“The unfortunate client for whom it is my privilege to appear,” said 
a young barrister, making his first attempt in Westminster Hall, “the 
unfortunate client for whom_ I appear, hem, hem—I say my lord, my 
unfortunate client—” Leaning forward and speaking in a soft voice, 
the Judge said: “You may go on sir, so far the court is with you.” 

LORD KENYON’S PARSIMONY 

Having jested about Kenyon’s parsimony as the old man was at the 
point of death, Ellenborough hearing that through the blunder of an illiter¬ 
ate undertaker the motto on Kenyon’s hatchment in Lincoln’s Inn Fields 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


261 


had been painted, ^'‘Mors janua vita” instead of Mors jan.ua vitae,” 
exclaimed. “Bless you, there’s no mistake; Kenyon’s will directed that 
it should be ‘vita,’ so that his estate might be saved the extra expense 
of a dipthong.” 

Ellenborough was the lawyer who vanquished such champions as Burke, 
Fox, Sheridan, Windham and Grey, in the Hastings Impeachment, 
succeeding in 20 out of 23 important contests on the admission of evidence, 
and after 145 days of trial, cleared his client by a large majority vote 
of the Peers. 


SCHOULER’S CHARACTERIZATION OF TOOMBS AND 
BENJAMIN 

_ “Notwithstanding great brain power and ability, Toombs was a 
difficult man to get along with; his tongue was sharp and his disappointed 
ambition to be first made him sharply sensorious of the man who preceded 
him. ^ Whatever Davis chose to do he himself would have done differently. 
Foreign relations gave him but little employment, for he used to say that 
as Secretary of State he carried the archives of the Confederacy under 
his hat. He criticised his chief as one too partial to regulars and West 
Point; and Davis, to humor him, after R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia had 
taken his place in the cabinet, made him a brigadier-general of volunteers. 
Toombs was one of a type of southern statesmen, now extinct with 
slavery, possessing much political ability, but combative, intractable 
and self-asserting. His military success was not great. Too late for 
prowess at Bull Run, he idled his time during the inaction of a Virginia 
camp, indulgent to the boys, exasperating to superiors, incapable of 
military discipline, fault finding and not in expression alone intemperate. 
Before the war was half over, this man, who so nearly led the southern 
cause in early 1861, retired to his home, vexed and soured against the 
whole concern. Contemporaries had said at the outset that Toombs 
was the brain of the Confederacy; but that title, as events developed, 
belongs rather to Attorney-General Judah P. Benjamin, the ablest, 
most versatile and most constant of all Davis’ civil counselors, who acted 
as Secretary of War after Walker’s retirement in September and was then 
installed Secretary of State by the following March, to remain premier 
until the bitter end, sanguine and serene in bearing, through all mutations 
of fortune and misfortune.”— Schouler's U. S. Hist., 88-9. 


THE CYCLE OF MORAL REVOLUTIONS 

“Tacitus is irresistible. ‘The more I meditate,’ he writes, ‘on the events 
of ancient and modern times, the more I am struck with the capricious 
uncertainty which mocks the calculations of men in all their transactions.’ 
Again: ‘Possibly there is in all things a kind of cycle and there may be 
moral revolutions just as there are changes of seasons.’ ” 

—James Ford Rhodes. 




THOMAS ERSKINE, lord erskine (1750-1823), England 


EVIDENCE 

“The principles of evidence in law are founded in the charities of 
religion, in the philosophy of nature, in the truths of history, and in the 
experience of human life.” 


THE JEWS 

“Is there a person of the least knowledge who suffers himself to doubt 
that in the most comprehensive meaning of Scripture, the prophecy of 
the Christian religion’s universal reception is fast fulfilling, and certainly 
must be fulfilled? For my own part, gentlemen, of the jury, I have no 
difficulty in saying to you, not as counsel in this cause, but speaking 
upon my honor, for myself (and I claim to be considered as an equal 
authority, at least, to Mr. Paine, on the evidence which ought to extablish 
any truth), that the universal dispersion of the Jews throughout the 
world, their unexampled sufferings, and their invariable distinguished 
characteristics, when compared with the histories of all other nations, 
and with the most ancient predictions of their own lawgivers and prophets 
concerning them, would be amply sufficient to support the truths of the 
Christian religion, if every other record and testimony on which they 
stand had irrecoverably perished.” 

—From Erskine’s speech in defense of Thos. Paine, for puhlishirig 
the Age of Reason, 179Jf. 

KING—DONKEY 

“That which is called firmness in a king, is called obstinacy in a donkey.” 

TEMPER JUSTICE WITH MERCY 

“Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer, as we look 
hereafter to have justice administered to ourselves; upon the prinicple 
on which the attorney-general prays sentence upon my client—God have 
mercy upon us!—instead of standing before him in judgment with the 
hopes and consolations of Christians, we must call upon the mountains 
to cover us; for which of us can present for Omniscient examination a 
pure, unspotted, and faultless course? But I humbly expect that the 
benevolent Author of our being will judge us, as I have been pointing 
out for your example. Holding up the great volume of our lives in His 
hand, and regarding the general scope of them, if He discovers benevo¬ 
lence, charity, and good ^ill to man, beating in the heart, where He 
alone can look; if He finds that our conduct, though often forced out of 
the path by our infirmities, has been in general well directed. His search¬ 
ing eye will assuredly never pursue us into those little corners of our 
lives, much less will His justice select them for punishment, without the 
general context of our existence, by which faults may be sometimes 
found to have grown out of virtues, and very many of our heaviest 
offenses to have been gratified, by human imperfection, upon the best 
and kindest of our affections. No, gentlemen, believe me this is not the 
course of divine justice, or there is no truth in the Gospels of Heaven. 
If the general tenor of man’s conduct be such as I have represented, he 
may walk through the shadow of death, with all his faults about him, 
with as much cheerfulness as in the common paths of life, because he 
knows that, instead of a stern accuser, to expose before the Author of 


GREAT SAYING.S BY GREAT LAWYERS 


263 


his nature those frail passages which, like the scored matter in the book 
before you, checkers the volume of the brightest and best spent life, 
His mercy will obscure them from the eyes of His purity, and our re- 
pentence blot them out forever.” 

—From argument to the jury, in the Stockdale case. 

THE FEELINGS OF SUBJUGATED MAN 

‘‘Gentlemen, I have not been considering this subject through the cold 
medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of 
hurnan dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among reluctant 
nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how 
such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth 
from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded 
by his subjects, addressing the govenor of a British colony, holding a 
bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 
‘Who is it,’ said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon bj^ 
the restless foot of English adventure—‘who is it that causes this river 
to rise in the high mountains and to empty itself into the ocean? Who 
is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, that calms them again 
in summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, 
and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure ? The same Being 
who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave 
ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,’ saM the warrior, throwing 
down his tomakawk upon the ground and raising the war sound of his 
nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; 
and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look 
for affection.”— From speech in defense of Stockdale. 

A London publisher issued a phamphlet regarding the trial of Warren 
Hastings, in which the author, a Scottish clergyman, reflects severely on 
the House of Commons. It was moved by a member of Commons that 
the attorney-general be directed to prosecute Stockdale the printer of 
the pamphlet, for libel on the Commons. Says Jas. L. High of Erskine 
—‘‘There have been abler judges, there have been wiser statesmen, but 
as a forensic orator, he stands without a rival and without a peer.” 

AN APOLOGY FOR EXCESS 

“From minds thus subdued by the terms of punishment there could 
issue no words of genius to expand the empire of human reason, nor any 
masterly compositions on the general nature of government, by the help 
of which the great commonwealths of mankind have founded their estab¬ 
lishments; much less any of those useful applications of them to critical 
conjunctures, by which from time to time, our own constitution, by the 
exertions of patriot citizens, has been brought back to its standard. 
Under such terrors all the great lights of science and civilization must 
be extinguished: for men can not communicate their free thoughts to one 
another with a lash held over their heads. It is the nature of everything 
that is great and useful, both in the animate and inanimate world, to 
be wild and irregular; and we must be contented to take them with 
the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks 
from the fetters of criticism; but its wanderings are sanctioned by its 
majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path: subject to the critic, 
and you tame it into dullness. Mighty rivers break down their banks 
in the winter, sweeping to death the flocks which are fattened on the soil 
that they fertilize in the summer: the few may be saved by embank¬ 
ments from drowning, but the flock must perish for hunger. Tempests 
occasionally shake our dwellings and dissiapte our commerce; but they 
scourge before them the lazy elements which without them would stag¬ 
nate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself—the last and best 


264 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


gift of God to his creatures, must be taken just as she is. You might 
pare her down into law; but she would then be Liberty no longer: and you 
must be content to die under the lash of this inexorable justice, which 
you had exchanged for the banners of freedom.” 

—Passage from defense of John Stockdale. 

DESCRIPTION OF OLD MAN IN BREACH OF PROMISE CASE 

“It is probable that her (the plaintiff’s) circumstances were very low, 
from the character in which she was introduced to the defendant, who 
being an old and infirm man, was desirous of some elderly person as a 
house-keeper; and no imputation can be justly east upon the plaintiff 
for consenting to such an introduction; for, by Mr. Wallace’s favor, the 
jury had a view of this defendant, and the very sight of him rebutted 
every suspicion that could possibly fall upon a woman of any age, con¬ 
stitution, or complexion. I am sure everybody who was in court must 
agree with me, that all the diseases catalogued in the dispensatory 
seemed to be running a race for his life, though the asthma appeared 
to have competely distanced his competitors, as the fellow was blowing 
like a smith’s bellows the whole time of the trial. His teeth being all 
gone, I shall say nothing of his gums; and as to his shape, to be sure, 
a base-fiddle is perfect gentility compared to it.” 

He concluded with expressing the wish that the young woman whom the 
defendant had married: 

“Would manifest her affection by furnishing him with a pair of horns, 
sufficient to defend himself against the sheriff, when he came to levy 
the money under the verdict.”^— Howard v. Bingham. 

EXTRACT IN CRIMINAL CONVERSATION 

“Yet, dreadful to relate, and it is the bitterest evil of which the plaintiff 
has to complain, a criminal intercourse, for nearly five years before the 
discovery of the connection, had most probably taken place. I will 
leave you to consider what must have been the feelings of such a husband, 
upon the fatal discovery that his wife—and such a wife—had conducted 
herself in a manner that not merely deprived him of her comfort and 
society, but placed him in a situtation too horrible to be described. 

* * * He does not know at what time this heavy calamity fell upon him. 
He is tortured by the most conflicting of all human sensations. When 
he looks at the cMldren whom he is by law bound to protect and to pro¬ 
vide for, and from whose existence he ought to receive the delightful 
return which the union of instinct and reason has provided for the con¬ 
tinuation of the world, he knows not whether he is lavishing his fondness 
and affection upon his own children, or upon the seed of a villain, sown 
in the bed of his honor and delight. He starts back with horror, when in¬ 
stead of his own image reflected from their infant features, he thinks he 
sees the destroyer of his happiness—a midnight robber introduced into 
his house, under professions of friendship and brotherhood— a plunderer, 
not in the repositories of his treasure, which may be supplied, or lived 
without— %ut there where he had garnered up his hopes,' —where either 
he must live, or bear no life.” 

This action was brought by a clergyman, the Archbishop of York, 
against a country gentleman, who lived in his parish and with whom he 
had been on terms of great intimacy—Markham v. Faucet. The ver¬ 
dict was for $35,000, obtained by Erskine who was for palintiff; tried 
in 1802. 

THE SOURCE OF ALL OUR AFFECTIONS 

“Nothing, certainly is more delightful to the human fancy than the 
possession of a beautiful woman, in the prime of health and youthful 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


265 


passion; it is, beyond all doubt, the highest enjoyment which God in 
his benevolence, and for the wisest purposes, has bestowed upon His 
own image. I reverence as I ought that mysterious union of mind and 
body, which, while it continues our species, is the source of all our affec¬ 
tions—which builds up and dignifies the condition of human life—which 
binds the husband to the wife by ties more indissoluble than laws can 
possibly create—and which, by the reciprocal endearments arising from 
a mutual passion, a mutual interest, and a mutual honor, lays the founda¬ 
tion of that parental affection which dies in the brutes, with the ne¬ 
cessities of nature, but which reflects back again upon the human parents 
the unspeakable sympathies of their offspring, and all the sweet, delight¬ 
ful relations of social existence.” 

The above passage was given by Erskine in his argument to the jury, 
in Howard v. Bingham for Criminal Conversation, as a contrast between 
true lovers, and the relation that existed between Howard and his wife, 
as Lady Elizabeth was compelled to marry him, after breaking off an en¬ 
gagement with Bingham, whom she dearly loved. The seduction did not 
take place between her and Bingham, until plaintiff (Howard) had really 
cast her off, because of their cordial hatred for each other, leading Erskine 
to say, in the same address: “I would have brought before you a noble 
youth (Bingham), who had fixed his affections upon one of the most 
beautiful of her sex (Mrs. Howard), and who enjoyed his in return. 
I would have shown you their suitable condition; I would have concluded 
by showing her to you in the arms of another, by the legal prostitution 
of parental choice, in the teeth of affection, with child by a rival, and 
only reclaimed at last, after so cruel and so afflicting a divorce, and her 
very morals in a manner impeached, by asserting the-purity and virtue 
of original and spotless choice. Good God! imagine my client to be 
plaintiff, and what damages are you not prepared tb give him? And yet, 
he is here as defendant, and damages are demanded against him. Oh, 
monstrous conclusion!” Erskine represented the defendant, in the Court 
of King’s Bench, 1794. Verdict was for the plaintiff but Erskine suc¬ 
ceeded in reducing it to $2,500. This is one of the few cases in which 
Erskine appeared for defendant. 

ORATORY 

“Intellect alone, however exalted, without strong feelings, without 
even irratable sensibility, would be only like an immense magazine of 
powder, if there were no such element as fire in the natural world. It is 
the heart which is the spring and fountain of all eloquence.”— From a letter 
htj Erskine, introducing the Speeches of Charles James Fox. 

DIGNITY OF THE LAW 

“If the dignity of the law is not sustained, its sun is set, never to be 
lighted up again.”— In Burdett v. Abbott, 5 Dow., 202. 

TILT WITH JUDGE BULLER 

Mr. Erskine, at the age of 34, was engaged in the defense of Dr. Shipley, 
Dean of St. Asaph, indicted, most absurdly, as it appeared, for a seditious 
libel; he having caused to be published a pamphlet, entitled ‘A Dialogue 
between a Gentleman and a Farmer,’ written by his brother-in-law, the 
celebrated Sir William Jones. The cause came before Mr. Justice Buffer; 
the'jury returned as their verdict, ‘guilty of publication only.’ A singular 

conversation ensued: , , , i , -x -n 

Q. Buffer, J.: “Gentlemen, if you add the word, only, it will be 

negativing the innuendoes.” , . . . , • j ^ j 

A. Erskine: “I desire your Lordship, sitting here as judge, to record 

the verdict, as given by the jury.” 


266 


GREAT HAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Q. Buller, J.: “You say he is guilty of publishing the pamphlet, 
and that the meaning of the innuendos is, as stated in the indictment.” 

A. Juror: “Certainly.” 

Q. Erskine: “Is the word, only, to stand as part of the verdict?” 

A, Juror “Certainly.” 

A. Erskine: “Then I insist it shall be recorded.” 

Q. Buller, J.: “Then the verdict must be understood; let me under¬ 
stand the jury.” 

A. Erskine: “The jury do understand their verdict.” 

Q. Buller, J.: “Sir, I will not be interrupted.” 

A. Erskine: “I stand here as an advocate for a brother citizen; 
and I desire that the word only, may be recorded.” 

Q. Buller, J.: “Sit down. Sir; remember your duty, or I shall be 

obliged to proceed in another manner.” 

A. Erskine: “Your Lordship may proceed in what manner you think 
fit. I know my duty, as well as your Lordship knows yours, I shall not 
alter my conduct.” 

Upon this. Lord Campbell, afterwards Chief Justice of England, 
has this to say: 

“The learned judge took no notice of his reply; and quailing, under 
the rebuke of his pupil (Erskine had read law with Buller), did not repeat 
the menace of commitment. This noble stand for the independence 
of the Bar, would, of itself, have entitled Erskine to the statue, which the 
profession affectionately erected to his memory, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. 
We are to admire the decency and propriety of the demeanor, during the 
struggle, no less than its spirited and the felicitous precision, with which 
he meted out the requisite and justifiable portions of defiance. The 
example has had a salutary effect, in illustrating and establishing the 
duties of judge and advocate in England.” 

— Sigmas ^Reminiscences of Sam'l Dexter,’ 62-Jf; 6 Campbell's Lives 
of the Lord Chancellors, JflS. 

DUTY OF A LAWYER—DEFENSE OF THOS. PAINE 

“I will forever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and^ 
integrity of the English bar, without which impartial justice, the most' 
valuable part of the English Constitution, can have no existence. From 
the moment that anj^ advocate can be permitted to say that he will, 
or will not, stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the 
court where he daily sits to practice, from that moment the liberties of 
England are at an end. If the advocate refuses to defend from what 
he may think of the charge or of the defense, he assumes the character 
of the judge; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment; and, in 
proportion to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of, 
perhaps, a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose 
favor the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, 
and which commands the very judge himself to be his counsel.” 

Before defending Thomas Paine for Publishing his ‘Rights of Man.’ 
Paine was pronounced guilty by the jury. The case was tried before 
Lord Kenyon, 1792.— Avthor. 

ARGUMENT TO THE JURY IN DEFENSE OF PAINE 

“The proposition which 1 mean to maintain, as the basis of the Liberty 
of the press, and without which it is an empty sound, is this: that every 
man, not intending to mislead, but seeking to enlighten others with what 
his reason and conscience, however erroneously, have dictated to him 
as truth, may address himself to the universal reason of a whole nation, 
either upon the subject of governments in general, or upon that of our 
own particular country; that he may analyze the principles of the con- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


267 


stitution, point out its errors and defects, examine and publish its cor¬ 
ruptions, warn his fellow-citizens against their ruinous consequences, 
and exert his whole faculties in pointing out the most advantageous 
changes in establishments which he considers to be radically defective, 
or sliding from their object by abuse. All this every subject of this 
country has a right to do, if he contemplates only what he thinks would 
be for its advantage, and but seeks to change the public mind by the 
conviction which flows from reasoning dictated by conscience. 

“If, indeed, he writes what he does not think; if, contemplating the 
misery of others, he wickedly condemns what his own understanding 
approves; or, even admitting his real disgust against the government 
or its corruptions, if he calumniates living magistrates, or holds out to 
individuals, that they have a right to run before the public mind in their 
conduct; that they may oppose by contumacy or force what private 
reason only disapproves; that they may disobey the law, because their 
judgment condemns it; or resist the public will, because they honestly 
wish to change it, he is then a criminal upon every principle of rational 
policy, as well as upon the immemorial precedents of English justice; 
because such a person seeks to disunite individuals from their duty 
to the whole, and excites to overt acts of misconduct in a part of the 
community, instead of endeavoring to change, by the impluse of reason, 
that universal assent, which, in this and in every country, constitutes 
the law for all. 

“I have, therefore, no difficulty in admitting, that, if upon an attentive 
persual of this work, it shall be found that the defendant has promulgated 
any doctrines which excite individuals to withdraw from their subjectibn 
to the law by which the whole nation consents to be governed; if his 
book shall be found to have warranted or excited that unfortunate 
criminal who appeared here yesterday to endeavor to relieve himself 
from imprisonment, by the destruction of a prison, or dictated to him the 
language of defiance which ran through the whole of the defense; if through¬ 
out the work there shall be found any syllable or letter, which strikes 
at the security of property, or which hints that anything less than the 
whole nation can constitute the law, or that the law, be it what it may, 
is not the inexorable rule of action for every individual, I willingly 
yield him up to the justice of the court.” 

vSPEECH IN PROSECUTION OF WILLIAMS 

In 1897, he prosecuted Williams, the publisher of Paine’s “Age of 
Reason,” who was convicted, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, 
which seems inconsistent, as he had defended Thos. Paine, the writer 
of the same. 

THE TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY 

“I have been ever deeply devoted to the truths of Christianity; and 
my belief in the holy gospel is by no means Owing to the principles of 
education, though I was religiously educated by the best of parents, 
but has arisen from one of the most continued reflections of my riper 
years and understanding. It forms at this moment the great consolation 
of a life, which, like a shadow, passeth away; and without it, I 
should consider my long course of health and prosperity, too long 
perhaps, and too uninterrupted to be good for any man, only as the dust 
which the wind scatters, and rather as a snare than a blessing. * * * 

Is not this freedom of controversy, and freedom of worship, sufficient 
for all the purposes of human happiness and improvement? Can it be 
necessary for either, that the law should hold out, revile the government 
of their country, or the religion on which it rests for its foundation? I 
expect to hear in answer to what I am now saying, much that will offend 


268 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


me. * * * Every man has a right to investigate, with decency, 

controversial points of the Christian religion; but no man, consistently 
with a law which only exists under its sanctions, has a right to deny its 
very existence, and to pour forth such shocking and insulting invectives, 
as the lowest establishments in the graduation of civil authority ought 
not to be subjected to, and which soon would be borne down by insolence 
and disobedience, if they were. 

“The principle pervades the whole system of the law, not merely 
in its abstract theory, but in its daily, in its most applauded practice. 
The intercourse between the sexes, which, properly regulated, not only 
continues, but humanizes and adorns our natures, plays, and novels, 
which are in the hands of everybody. Some of them lead to the confirma¬ 
tion of ever^ virtuous principle; others, though with the same profession, 
address the imagination in a manner to lead the passions into dangerous 
excesses; but though the law does not nicely discriminate the various 
shades which distinguish such works from one another, so as to suffer 
many to pass, through its liberal spirit, that upon principle ought to be 
suppressed, would it, or does it tolerate, or does any decent man contend 
that it ought to pass by unpunished, libels of the most shameless obscen¬ 
ity, manifestly pointed to debauch innocence, and to blast and poison 
the morals of the rising generation? * * * ^ 

“Gentlemen, the author of this book has written largely on public 
liberty and government; and this last performance, which I am now 
prosecuting, has, on that account, been more widely circulated, and prin¬ 
cipally among those who attached themselves from principle to his 
forpier works. This circumstance renders a public attack upon all re¬ 
vealed religion from such a writer infinitely more dangerous. The 
religious and moral sense of the people of Great Britain is the great anchor, 
which alone can hold the vessel of the state amidst the storms which 
agitate the world; and if the mass of the people were debauched from the 
principles of religion, the true basis of that humanity, charity, and benevo¬ 
lence, which have been so long the national characteristic, instead of 
mixing myself, as I sometimes have done, in political reformations, I 
would retire to the uttermost corners of the earth, to avoid their agitation; 
and would bear, not only the imperfections and abuses complained of 
in our own wise establishment, but even the worst government that 
ever existed in the world, rather than go to the work of reformation 
with a multitude set free from all the charities of Christianity, who had 
no other sense of God’s existence than was to be collected from Mr. 
Paine’s observations of nature, which the mass of mankind have no leisure 
to contemplate, which promises no future rewards, to animate the good 
of the glorious pursuit of human happiness nor punishments to deter 
the wicked from destroying it even in its birth. The people of England 
are a religious people, and, with the blessing of God, so far as it is in my 
power, I will lend my aid to keep them so.’’ 

— The above is from Ershine's speech to the jury, in the prosecution 
of Williams, on behalf of ^ The Society for the Suppression of Vice 
and Immorality,' 1797. Williams was found guilty, and sentenced 
to one year in prison. 

TILT WITH LORD MANSFIELD—BAILLIE CASE 

After stating that the seamen of the hospital, grateful for the exertions 
of Captain Baillie in their favor, had surrounded his apartments, and 
testified their feelings by acclamations, “which sailors never bestow but 
on men who deserve them,’’ Mr. Erskine proceeded in that strain of 
excited language and sentiment, which when skilfully applied seldom 
fails to carry with it the passions of the hearers:— 

“This simple and honest tribute was the signal for all that has followed. 
The leader of these unfortunate people was turned out of office; and the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


269 


affidavit of Charles Smith is filed in court, which I thank God, I have 
not been able to read without tears; how, indeed, could any man, when he 
swears that for this cause alone his place was taken from him: that he 
received his dismission when languishing with sickness in the infirmary, 
the consequence of which was that his unfortunate wife and several of 
his helpless, innocent children died in want and misery, the woman actually 
expiring at the gates of the hospital! That such a wreath should escape 
chains and a dungeon is a reproach to humanity, and to all order and 
government; but that they should become prosecutors is a degree of 
effrontery that would not be believed by any man who did not accustom 
himself to observe the shameless scenes which the monstrous age we live 
in is every day producing.” 

(But the man, Erskine considered the chief offender still remained 
untouched. At length, towards the end of the speech, although that 
person did not stand forward as a party to the proceeding, Erskine 
ventured to name him):— 

“Indeed, Lord Sandwich has, in my mind, acted such a part-” 

(Here Lord Mansfield interrupted him, reminding him that Lord Sand¬ 
wich was not in court. Mr. Erskine burst forth impetuously):— 

“I know that he is not before the court; but for that very reason I will 
bring him before the court. He has placed these men in the front of the 
battle, in hopes to escape under shelter; but I will not join battle with 
them: their vices though screwed up to the highest pitch of human 
depravity, are not of dignity enough to vindicate the combat with me. 
I assert that the Earl of Sandwich has but one road to escape out of 
this business without pollution and disgrace; and that is, by publicly 
disowning the acts of the prosecutors, and restoring Captain Baillie 
to his command. If he does this, then his offense will be no more than 
the too common one of having suffered his own personal interests to 
prevail over his public duty, in placing his voters in the hospital. But, 
if on the contrary, he continues to protect the prosecutors, in spite of 
the evidence of their guilt —which has excited the abhorrence of the 
numerous audience that crowd this court; if he keeps this injured man 
suspended, or dares to turn that suspension into a removal, I shall then 
not scruple to declare him an accomplice in their guilt and a traitor to his 
trust. Fine and imprisonment! The man deserves a palace instead 
of a prison, who prevents the palace built by the bounty of his country 
from being converted into a dungeon, and who sacrifices his own secur¬ 
ity to the interests of humanity and virtue.”— Crown v. Baillie. 

When Erskine began his career, his prospects were far from encouraging. 
Without means and without professional or social connections, he looked 
forward probably to a weary probation upon the back benches of the 
court, among the horde of nameless and briefiess juniors, lingering hke 
the ghosts upon the banks of the river Styx, wearily waiting for a passage 
over. He had scarcely a shilling in his pocket when he got his first retainer; 
and that he would not have received, and consequently might not have 
risen to be Lord Chancellor, but for the fortunate Sprain which caused 
him hastily to relinquish an intended visit, and return home, where he 
was waited on by a maritime gentleman. Captain Baillie, whose case he 
took up, mastered, and triumphantly conducted before Lord Mansfield. 
When the case came on, he found in the list of barristers retained, the 
names of four senior counsel, and, despairing of being heard after so 
many predecessors, he gave himself no more trouble about the matter. 
But, the testimony was so long, and some of the counsel so tedious — 
tediousness aggravated by the circumstance that one of them was afflicted 
with strangury, and had to retire once or twice in the course of his 
argument —that Lord Mansfield adjourned the cause till next morning, 
thus giving the young advocate a whole night to arrange his thoughts, 
and enabling him to address the court when his faculties were awake 
and refreshed. In alluding to this lucky incident, by which he was enabled 


270 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


to make what Lord Campbell calls “the most wonderful forensic effort 
of which we have any account in British annals,” Erskine says,— 
have since flourished, but I have always blessed God for the providential 
strangury of poor Hargrave.” Rarely has a brilliant start in life,— 
perhaps, the entire success of a life,—been owing to so many lucky acci¬ 
dents; but who does not see that all these would have been of no ad¬ 
vantage to the young barrister, had he been unequal to the occasion; had 
he not, by previous study, self-training, and self-sacrifice, prepared 
himself to take advantage of the accidents which brought him into 
notice. — Matthews' 'Getting On in The World' 29-30. 

ARMOR OF THE LAW 

“A prisoner is covered all over with the armor of the law.” 

“Erskine died poor.—But at one time was worth a million dollars.” 

—Said Walter Scott 

PLEASURE AND PAYNE 

/ Visiting Sir Ralph Payne, Erskine, being tired, reclined on a sofa; 
in the course of the evening returned to the festive circle; and Lady 
Payne, inquiring how he found himself, he presented her the following 
couplet:— 

“ ’Tis true I am ill, but I need not complain. 

For he never knew pleasure, who never knew Payne." 

THE AGES OF IRON AND BRASS 

I 

I On the removal of a distinguished counsel from a house in Red Lion 

, Square, an ironmonger became its occupant; and Erskine wrote the 
following epigram on the change:— 

“This house, where once a lawyer dwelt. 

Is now a smith’s—Alas! 

How rapidly the iron age 
Succeeds the age of brass!” 

RUFUS CHOATE ON ERSKINE 

“Erskine was a very vehement speaker. A gentleman told me that 
he had frequently seen him, in addressing a jury, jump up and knock 
his feet together before he touched the floor again; and, indeed, how could 
he have carried off many things which occur in his speeches, except by 
great vehemence, such as T tremble at the thought!’ The Indian in 
Stockdale’s case! and T will bring him before the court!’ and again, 
‘By God, the man who says this is a ruffian.’ He was, however, very 
ju^cious in his forensic flights; never made a blunder. The manage¬ 
ment of his case, too, was admirable. Master of every art, and trick, 
and subtlety and contrivance. But, after all, he was a very singular, 
and, in some degree, an inexplicable fellow. He knew men very thoroughly 
from his service on deck and field. Then he had thrown himself upon 
the best English literature, with a hungry and even voracious appetite; 
and from it, especially from his carfeul and continual study of Milton 
and Shakespeare, he gained his chaste, rich and admirable diction. 
This diction is his chief acquisition. And he thus grasped the flower of 
Hterature, without becoming imbued with the faults and foibles of the 
literary man; which are a dreamy, sentimental, brooding, imagining 
tendency. These words he divided, and delivered in sentences fasiuoned 
by a very musical and rhythmic ear. He had, too, a natural knack for 
catching at elegant and felicitous modes of expression As he learned 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


271 


not much besides words, and how to answer the more pressing necessities 
of his profession, and as he came early into active business, he spent his 
life in thus meeting the demands of the day; and when his energies for 
that somewhat abated, he had no thought knowledge to fall back 
upon. He was sometimes said to have been put down, by his adver¬ 
sary procuring some one to yawn in his face. His career of twenty 
years came to a dead stop in the woolsack of the Chancellor of England.” 


NOT A PROFOUND JURIST 

“Erskine never did become a profound jurist, but along with his 
lively imagination he had a logical understanding, and by severe appli¬ 
cation at this period (1778, when 28 years old) he made the considerable 
progress, which several who have been pushed high in our profession 
have never reached, of being able thoroughly to comprehend any question 
of law which he had occasion to consider,—to collect and arrange the 
authorities upon it, and to argue it lucidly and scientifically.” 

—6 CamphelVs Lord Chan., 387. 

COMPARED WITH CONTEMPORARIES 

“Erskine could not display the peculiar energy of Edward Law (Lord 
Ellenborough), invigorated as it was by Latinized pharseology, and a 
pronunciation slightly tinctured with a northern burr. He had not the 
coarse humor of Mingay, the tormenting pertinacity of Gibbs, or the 
interrogative astuteness of Garrow, but he possessed an opulence of 
imagination, a fertility of fancy, a power of commanding at an instant 
all the resources of his mind, and a dexterity in applying them, which 
the whole united Bar of England could not equal.” 

— CampbelVs 6 Ld. Chan, 679, note. 

CHARACTERISTICS 

“His first great excellence was his devotion to his client and in the 
whole compass of his orations, there is not a single instance of the business 
in hand—the great work of persuading—being sacrificed to raise a 
laugh or to excite admiration of his own powers. He utterly forgot 
himself in the character he represented. Through life he was often 
ridiculed for vanity and egotism—but not from anything he ever said 
or did in conducting a cause in a court of justice. There from the moment 
the jury was sworn he thought of nothing but the verdict, till it was 
recorded in his favor. Earnestness and energy were ever present through¬ 
out his speeches—impressing his argument on the mind of his hearer 
with a force which seemed to compel conviction. He never spoke at 
a tiresome length; and throughout all liis speeches no weakness, no dull¬ 
ness, no flagging is discoverable; and we have ever a lively statement of 
facts—or reasoning pointed, logical, and triumphant. * * * His diction 
was pure, simple, and mellifluous—the cadences not being borrowed 
from any model, nor following any rule, but marked by constant harmony 
and variety. * * * He used all manner of innocent little artifices of dress, 
examined the court the night before the trial, in order to select the most 
advantageous place for addressing the jury. On the cause being called, 
the crowded audiences were, perhaps, kept waiting a few minutes before 
the celebrated stranger made his appearance; and when, at length, he 
gratified their impatient curiosity, a particularly nice wig and a pair 
of new yellow gloves distinguished and embellished his person, beyond 
the ordinary costume of the barristers of the circuit.” 

— CamphelVs 6 Lord Chancellors, 680-2. 


WM. M. EVARTS (1818-1901) New York 

MEN—CHARACTER 

“As there is nothing in the world great but men, there is nothing truly 
great in men but character.” 

THE CONVICT THANKED CLERGYMAN 

Evarts used to tell a story of a convict, who thanked the clergyman 
who obtained his pardon, and returning with gratitude the Bible lent him, 
said he hoped he should never have occasion to use it again. 

DOLLAR WOULD GO FURTHER IN WASHINGTON’S DAY 

THAN OURS 

When Lord Coleridge visited this country, he remarked to Evarts, 
who was showing him the sights, Coleridge remarked upon- looking 
at the width of the Potomac, that he did not believe Washington could 
throw a dollar across the river, as he was reputed to have done. “You 
know,” said Evarts, “that a dollar went much farther in those days than 
it does in ours.” 

TAKEN UP FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 

While Evarts was Secretary of State in Hayes’ Cabinet, he saw an 
elevator ascending, filled to overflowing with missionaries, and observed 
that “he had'never before seen so large a collection taken up for foreign 
missions.” 

HANDS IN POCKET 

Evarts and Mark Twain, were the speakers at a banquet, and Evarts 
was disparaging his ability to cope with a man noted as a humorist, and 
finally said, “Does it not strike you as very humorous that a lawyer 
should be here to entertain you with his wit, when we have with us 
a professional wit?” (while he said this, he had his hands in his pantaloon 
pockets, as was his custom). Mark Twain, replied: “Does it not strike 
you as peculiar, that a lawyer appears here with his hands in his own 
pockets, instead of his client’s?” 

TEACHER ANSWERED ALL THE QUESTIONS, CORRECTLY— 
AND YET DID NOT PASS 

Said Wm. Evarts, at Brooklyn, N. Y., in the campaign of 1880: “The 
Democratic party having been up for examination several times, during 
the last 20 years, has now presented itself once more. It is like the 
teacher who could not pass examination down in Texas and after his 
entreaties, was allowed to try it over again, and failed a second time. 
He was asked why he didn’t pass that time and replied, ‘How could I? 
They asked me the same questions.’ He had better answer like the college 
student, who in examination had been badly plucked, and was asked 
how he fared. ‘Fared?’ said he, ‘I didn’t pass at all, and yet I answered 
every question correctly; and they asked me a great many questions.’ ” 

“ ‘Why,’ said his friends, ‘how could that be, if you answered every 
question correctly?’ ‘Why,’ replied, he, ‘to every question, I replied 
that I didn’t know.’ ” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


273 


“SOMETHING CHOICE FROM EVART’S PEN” 

Elihu Root visited Evarts, at his country home, in Vermont, and dur¬ 
ing the conversation, asked his host if he ever contributed anything to a 
certain Magazine. 

“Yes,” said Evarts, “the editor has written me for something choice 
from my pen. I think I’ll send liim a slice of this ham,” which, by the way, 
he was carving for his guests at his dinner. 

DONKEY LONELY WITHOUT HIM 

Said Evarts: “For the amusement of my little daughter I sent a 
donkey to my country home in Vermont. It was not much larger than 
a sheep. The child had never heard, until a day or two after its arrival, 
the lamentable voice of the creature. Struck by the sadness of its tone, 
she wrote in great haste for me to return immediately, stating as a reason, 
that the donkey was so lonely without me.” 

AFFIDAVITS NOT FACTS 

“Letters of acceptance of a candidate for the Presidency, are not ex¬ 
actly transactions or acts of Congress. When Admiral Coffin, who 
lived at Cape Cod as a child, by his adherence to the British crown had 
risen to the rank of Admiral in the Navy, he came over to visit this 
country. He came over in about 1830 to see his native land. On the 
way over, he told his officers that at Cape Cod they would see lobsters 
that would weigh 25 pounds. The rules would not permit the officers 
to contradict the Admiral, but they distrusted the statement. He said, 
‘If you doubt it, I will make you a bet.’ It was made. On arriving 
and making a thorough search, no such lobsters were found, of course. 
‘Well,’ said he, ‘they don’t happen to be here just now, but I mil get the 
affidavits of the fishermen to show there are such lobsters.’ A pile of 
affidavits was brought in, and it was left to an umpire to decide the 
bet, and he decided that ‘affidavits were not lobsters’.” 

—Speaking of Hancock's ^Letter of Acceptance.' in 1880. 

A TRIAL IN A COURT OF JUSTICE 

“A trial in a court of justice is a trial of many things besides the prisoner 
at the bar. It is a trial of the strength of the laws, of the power of the 
Government, of the duty of the citizens, of the fidelity to conscience, and 
the intelligence of the jury. It is a trial of those great principles of faith, 
of duty, of law, of civil society, that distinguish the condition of civili¬ 
zation from that of barbarism. I know no better instance of the distinc¬ 
tion between a civilized, instructed Christian people, and a rude and 
barbarous nation, than that which is shown in the assertions of right, 
where might and violence and the rage of passion in physical contest, 
determine everything; and this last, sober, discreet, patient, intelligent, 
authorized, faithful, scrupulous, conscientious investigation, under the 
lights of all that intelligence with which God has favored any of us; 
under that instruction which belongs to the learned and accredited 
expounders of the law of an established free government; under the aid 
of, and yet not misled by, the genius of eloquence of advocates on either 
” — Opening speech in prosecution of the case of the ‘Savannah Pri¬ 
vateers,' indicted for piracy, tried in N. Y., 1861. 

Graduated at 19 at Yale, with Samuel J. Tilden, Morrison R. Waite, 
Benjamin Silliman, Edward Pierrepont, Professor Lyman, and others. 
Read law, and took a law course at Harvard. He has been counsel in 


274 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the three greatest cases in this country during his career —President 
Johnson’s Impeachment, the Geneva Arbitration and the Hayes Tilden 
contest. 

WM. M. EVARTS’ TOAST 

Evarts said, after a party of wise men had eaten a goose stuffed with 
sage —“Before dinner you saw a goose stuffed with sage; now, you see 
a sage stuffed with goose.” 

A CANDID TRIBUTE 

At a Yale dinner just as Evarts rose to speak the large sugar ornament 
in front of him fell over. Without a moment’s hesitation he said—“Ah, 
gentlemen, this is a candid tribute I did not expect.” 

ALL IN TRANSPORTS 

At an Irving dinner, at which McCulloch and Florence were present, 
the two came up to Evarts and recalled to him a voyage they had made 
together. “In what ship was it?” asked someone. “I don’t know,” 
said Evarts, “I only know that we were all in transports.” 

THE VIRTUE OF VERMONT 

Evarts once said, in a humorous reference to the virtue of Vermont, 
that nobody could be admitted into its prisons without a certificate 
testifying to his previous good moral character. C 

CONSISTENCY 

“Hancock’s declaring in favor of a full, free ballot, and a fair count, is 
about as consistent as the husband’s killing his wife with the motto, 
‘God Bless our Home,’ ” said Evarts in a campaign speech in 1880. 

MARSHALL AND WEBSTER 

“If I were to name two men whose services were incomparably above 
that of all others in making this new experiment of free government of 
paper constitutions, a living power to a great and strenuous nation — 
twm that could not have been spared, though all others remained—I 
should say that to the great Chief Justice Marshall, and to the great 
forensic, popular, parliamentary defender and expounder of the Con¬ 
stitution, Daniel Webster, we most owe what we now enjoy.” 

—At the unveiling of the statue of Daniel Webster, in Central Park, 
N. F., Nov. 25, 1876. 

CHARACTERIZATION OF EVARTS 

“In humor, in adroitness, in judgment, in patience, in self-mastery, 
and in knowledge of law in its highest and broadest sense, Mr. Evarts, 
in our opinion, is facile princeps. He is five feet seven, thin and slender, 
with a face like parchment. Some one has said —‘He is head, nose, voice 
and forefinger’.”— Albany Law Journal, during the Beecher-Tilton trial. 

A PARALLEL—EVARTS, PORTER, BEACH 

“We confess that after quaking at the thunders of Beach, and growing 
feverish over the drama of Porter, it is refreshing to listen to the calm, 
clear logic of a man like Evarts. If one considers a case under Beach’s 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


275 


presentation, it is like looking on an object through a superior magnifying 
glass; when Porter presents it, you gaze through a variously stained glass 
window of many panes; when Evarts presents it, you see it through a 
broad, clear pane of French plate. We had feared, however, that Mr. 
Evarts would not appear to his best advantage in this trial. We had 
supposed that his proper and exclusive area was where grave Constitutional 
questions are dicussed —as for instance, on the impeachment trial of 
President Johnson. But his conduct of this case has been a surprise 
to us, as we dare say it has been to every one else. It seems to us that 
it has been faultless. In every point of view—he has exhibited the most 
varied and admirable talents of a lawyer. His cross-examination of 
Theodore Tilton, in our judgment, was an unequaled masterpiece; 
and his final argument, while it must yield to those of his brethren in 
brilliancy and declamatory force, must have left a deeper mark on the 
jury than theirs. Mr. Evarts’ rhetoric is far from being a model —some¬ 
what difiused and involved; but, in spite of all seeming disadvantages, 
he has the art to appear less an advocate and more a disinterested judge 
than either of his compeers.” 

—‘’Three Great Advocates' —Albany Law Journal, during the 

Beecher-Tilton Trial, 1875. 

EVARTSIN THREE GREAT CASES 

Evarts has been counsel in the three greatest cases in this country, 
during his career —the Johnson Impeachment, the Geneva Arbitration, 
and the Hayes-Tilden contest. He was also counsel in the Lemmon 
slave case; the Parrish will ease; the will of Mrs. Gardiner —the mother 
of President Tyler’s widow; senior counsel for Henry Ward Beecher in 
the Beecher-Tilton six-months’ trial, occupying eight days in his closing 
speech; for the prosecution of the Savannah Privateers, being opposed 
by James T. Brady; and in many other important causes. Received 
a $50,000 fee for an opinion upon the Berdell mortgage against the Boston, 
Hartford & Erie Railway. 

For Joseph H. Choate’s Description of Evarts, as a Lawyer —see 
Choate. 


MEN OF LETTERS 

“What is literature and who are men of letters? From another point 
of view we are the most unprofitable of mankind—engaged mostly in 
blowing soap-bubbles. From another point of view we are the most 
practical and energetic portion of the community. If literature be the 
art of employing words skilfully in representing facts, or thoughts, or 
emotions, you may see excellent specimens of it every day in the adver¬ 
tisements in our newspapers. Every man who uses his pen to convey 
his meaning to others belongs to the community of letters. Nay, he 
need not use his pen at all. The speeches of great orators are among 
the most treasured features of any national literature. The orations of 
Mr. Grattan are the text-books in the schools of rhetoric in the United 
States. Mr. Bright, under this aspect of him, holds a foremost place 
among the men of letters of England.” 

—James Anthony Froude, at Banquet of Royal Academy, London, 
April 29, 1876. 



THOS. EWING (1789-1871), Ohio 


A TEN DOLLAR FEE 

Ewing said when moneyless, at Athens, O., in 1816, for defending a 
boy for larceny, he was paid $10 as a retainer. He went to Marietta, 
tried and cleared his boy, received an additional $15, and retainers in 
18 new cases. 

“I have received several fees since of ten thousand dollars and upwards, 
but never one of which the value or in truth was as valuable to me as this 
of ten dollars.” 

Says Hugh McCulloch, in his “Men and Measures of Half a Century:” 
“The greatest lawyer the U. S. has produced west of the Alleghany 
Mountains.” 

John Welch, adds: “I always dreaded to see his name docketed for 
the defense when I was prosecuting attorney. For impetus, breadth, and 
logical force, he had few, if any equals.” 

ESTOPPED BY EVIDENCE 

“In the trial of a case, Mr. Ewing offered an item of evidence of doubt¬ 
ful competency, on a rather immaterial point, in an early state of the 
trial. His adversary objected, and sustained his objection by quite an 
argument. Mr. Ewing did not reply further than to say that there were 
‘authorities both ways’ on the question. The Court rejected the evidence. 
When they came to the vital point in the case, it was found that the 
evidence of the same nature was a sine qua non to the adversary’s 
case. Mr. Ewing claimed that his opponent was estopped by the former 
decision. The Court so ruled, and Ewing gained the case. In concluding 
his remarks, Mr. Ewing made the following quotation from some anti¬ 
quated version of David’s Psalms:— 

‘The wicked man he dag a pit, 

He dag it for his brother; 

And for his son he did fall in 
The pit he dag for t’other’.” 

— Reminiscences of Thos. Ewingf hy John Welch —H Mag. West 
Hist. 

CHARACTERIZATION OP EWING 

“As a lawyer, Mr. Ewing was thoroughly grounded in legal principles; 
his reading was large and accurate, and he had among other things, 
mastered at an early day the science of special pleading, without which 
no man can be an accomplished lawyer in this country or England. He was 
a man of large attainments in many departments of study. In science, 
in general literature, especially poetry and history, his reading was 
extensive and thorough, and his memory so tenacious that the acquisitions 
of a lifetiftie seemed to be always at his disposal. He had great power of 
analysis, great force and closeness of logic, a wide range of illustration, 
and, while he lacked the minute graces and style and scholarship, he had 
a thorough knowledge and command of the English tongue. A marked 
peculiarity in which his greatness as a reasoner, like that of his con¬ 
temporary, Webster, especially showed itself, was a faculty of logical 
statement of his case. His genius was eminently suggestive, setting other 
minds to work, and thus making his presence felt in every circle, however 
high or humble, in which he moved. He was a bold practitioner at the 
bar, relying, perhaps, sometimes too much upon a single blow in dis- 




GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


277 


posing of a case; and in this respect his method was in striking contrast 
with that of many of the leading lawyers of his day. The labor of minute 
preparation and care of details were distasteful to him; and for these 
he relied, at all events for many years, upon the younger men associated 
with him; but his judgment upon the steps to be taken in the preparation 
of a case, and upon the case itself, were prepared, was almost unerring; 
and the presentation of a case to either court or jury, he had few equals, 
and no superiors, at the bar of either State or Nation. The deep foun¬ 
dations of his strength were laid in hard study, untiring industry, indomit¬ 
able energy, and unflinching integrity and honor. * * * Mr. Ewing was 
a man of warm and generous heart, of most affectionate and genial 
spirit among his family and friends, full of kindness and sympathy. 
The struggles of his early life had undoubtedly left their traces, and given 
a tinge of sternness to his manner, and a habit of self-reliance so pro¬ 
nounced and unmistakable, as to seem to those who only met him offi¬ 
cially, like coldness and selflsh isolation. But these were only appearances, 
upon the surface, while at heart he was a loving and true man, and the 
friend and companion of good men.” 

—John W. Anderson, on behalf of the committee of the Ohio Supreme 
Court, upon Ewing's death — Jan. 9, 18,72. 

W. T. SHERMAN ON EWING 

“Mr. Ewing was a great big man, an intellectual giant, and looked 
down on religion as something domestic, something consoling, which 
ought to be encouraged; and to him it made little difference whether the 
religion was Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Catholic, provided 
the acts were ‘half as good’ as their professions.” 

—From a letter from Gen. Sherman to T. DeWitt Talmage, in the 
latter's letter of condolence upon the death of Airs. Wm. T. Sherman, 
who was a Catholic. {Edward Hole's ‘‘The America,nization of Ed¬ 
ward Boh,' 215). 

SOME CHARACTERISTICS 

Thomas Ewing was admittedly the Nestor of the Ohio Bar, and 
stood in the front rank of the legal profession of the country. * * * His 
great mind, his large acquirements, his peculiar mode of practice and his 
spotless moral character cannot but be profitable study for any lawyer. 
* * * His arguments were perfect illustrations of the science of logic. 
He seemed to have an intuitive perception of the vital points of a case. 
His mind was ‘massive and robust,’ and his analytical powers seldom 
equaled. ‘For impetus, breadth, and logical force,’ he had few, if any, 
equals. * * He was not graceful as a speaker; his gestures were clumsy, 
but natural. He was not an orator in the popular sense; and yet, in a 
])roper case, a case involving pathos, he could reach the heart, flush the 
cheek, quicken the pulse of the hearer and start the tear in his eye, 
equal to any speaker I ever heard. His long life was a life of study. 
He never forgot, but constantly reviewed, continued and enlarged his 
classics. Notwithstanding his large practice, he found time and strength 
to go over nearly the whole field of human knowledge. Hardly any 
subject escaped his research, and he had a memory that retained every¬ 
thing he acquired. He was an adept in the exact sciences, and a born 
mathematician. Was familiar with Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and 
other English poets; at home in astronomy, history, zoology, anthro¬ 
pology, chemistry and physiology. — The Author. 



WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN (1806-1869), Maine 

FINANCIAL IGNORANCE IN UNITED STATES SENATE 

“I declare here today, that in the whole number of learned financial men 
that I have consulted, I never have found any two of them who agree; 
and, therefore, it is hardly worth while for us to plead any very remarkable 
degree of ignorance when nobody is competent to instruct us; and yet 
such is the fact. I can state to you, Mr. President, that on one day I 
was advised very strongly by a leading financial man at all events to 
oppose this legal tender clause; he exclaimed against it with all the bitter¬ 
ness in the world. On the very same day I received a note from a friend 
of his, telling me that we could get along without it. I showed it to him 
and he expressed his utter surprise. He went home and next day tele¬ 
graphed me that he had changed his mind, and now thought it was 
absolutely necessary; and his friend who wrote to me, wrote again that 
he had changed his (laughter), and they were two of the most eminent 
financial men of the country.” 

—William Pitt Fessenden, Congressional Globe, Feb. 12, 1862, p. 766.. 

JUSTIFICATION FOR ACQUITTING PRESIDENT 
ANDREW JOHNSON 

“To the suggestion that popular opinion demands the conviction of 
the President, I reply that he is not on trial before the people, but before 
the Senate. The people have not heard it. They have not taken an oath 
to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the the laws. 
I have taken that oath. I cannot render judgment upon their con¬ 
victions, nor can they transfer to themselves my punishment if I violate 
my own. I shall consider myself undeserving of the confidence of that 
just and intelligent people who imposed upon me this great responsibility, 
and unworthy a place among honorable men, if for any fears of public 
reprobation, and for the sake of securing popular favor, I shall disregard 
the convictions of my judgment and conscience. The consequences 
that may follow from conviction or acquittal are not for me, with my 
convictions, to consider. The future is in the hands of Him who made and 
governs the universe, and the fear that He will not govern well would 
not excuse me for a violation of His law.” 

— Wm Pitt Fessenden, of Maine, May 16, 1868. 

BLAINE ON FESSENDEN 

“Fessenden was brilliant from his youth upward; had led the Maine 
legislature when but a few years beyond his majority; and at a time 
when members of the legal profession are struggling for a first foot-hold, 
he had stepped to the front rank in the Bar of Maine.” 

Again, he says:— 

“He was one of the ablest lawyers that has sat in the Senate since 
Webster.” 

—1 Twenty Years of Congress, 315-16; and 2 Twenty Years of 

Congress, 379. 

JAMES FORD RHODES’ TESTIMONY 

“Fessenden established himself finally permanently in the practice 
in Portland Me. He achieved high standing in his profession. His 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


279 


arguments impressed the judge and yet were direct and concise, rarely 
three-quarters of an hour in length. He argued cases in the United States 
Supreme Court, and had the honor of making an argument which con¬ 
tributed to the reversal of Justice Story, (Veazle v. Williams, 8 Howard, 
134 .)”—5 Rhodes's History of the U. S., 591. 

GIDEON WELLES’ CRITICISM 

“His (Fessenden’s) is a secondary mind. He is a good critic or fault¬ 
finder, not without good qualities, but has little administrative ability, 
lacks independence, self-reliance and force.”— 2 Welles's Diary, 6SH. 

A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMAN 

Someone has said, “Fessenden was one of the greatest constructive 
statesmen of his time—that of the Civil War—and efficiently aided 
Secretary Chase, of the treasury, though to his credit, he opposed the 
Legal Tender Act.” 

And Sumner said of him:— 

“All that our best generals were in arms, he was in the financial field.” 

And Lyman Trumbull:— 

“As a debater, engaged in the current business of legislation, the 
Senate has not had his equal in any time.” 


THE AGE OF RESEARCH 

“I rejoice in an occasion like this which draws the attention of the 
world to topics which illustrate the union of art with literature and of 
literature with science, because you have a hard race to run, you have a 
severe competition against the attraction of external pursuits, whether 
those pursuits take the form of business or pleasure. It is given you to 
teach lessons of the utmost importance to mankind, in maintaining 
the principle that no progress can be real which is not equable, which 
is not proportionate, which does not develop all the faculties belonging 
to our nature. If a great increase of wealth in a country takes place, and 
with that increase of wealth a powerful stimulus to the invention of mere 
luxury, that, if it stands alone, is not, never can be, progress. It is only 
that one-sided development which is but one side of deformity. I hope 
we shall have no one-sided development. One mode of avoiding it is to 
teach the doctrine of that sisterhood you have asserted today, and 
confident I am that the good wishes you have expressed on behalf of 
literature will be re-echoed in behalf of art wherever men of letters are 
found.” — W. E. Gladstone, at banquet of the Royal Academy, May 5, 1877. 



DAVID DUDLEY FIELD (1805-1894), New York 

AMERICAN PROGRESS IN JURISPRUDENCE 

“We began with asserting the sovereignty of the people. This was 
done by the Declaration of Independence in 1776 . * * * In our country 
this supreme power is divided between the Union and the States, but so 
much of it as has been given to the former was given by the latter. The 
result is, that Congress is not sovereign, nor is the President sovereign, 
nor is the Judiciary sovereign; nor, indeed, are all three combined sover¬ 
eign. They may exercise their part of the sovereign power, but it is only 
by delegation that they exercise their part at all. On the other hand, the 
reserved powers are all with the separate States (or the people thereof,) so 
that we have in fact a divided sovereignty, but none the less is it true, 
that sovereignty in this country resides with the people, partly in all 
the States united, and partly in the several States^—‘E pluribus^ unum.' 

“Following the primal and fundamental principle of sovereignty in 
the people, and consecrated by it, are certain rights pronounced inherent 
in every human being, to be lost only for crime: the right of life; the 
right of liberty; the right to worship God as conscience dictates; the 
right to choose one’s home wherever he can find it; the right to speak and' 
write freely; and the right to labor when, where, and for such reward 
as the laborer and his employer may agree to between themselves. Under 
the influence of these great principles, our political system. State and 
national, has been built; a fabric purely American, without precedent 
in the past and ready for further development in the future. * * * The 
United States have placed their constitution beyond the reach of ex¬ 
ecutive or legislative power. The President may act and the Congress 
may act, but the judiciary may decide after all, whether the act is author¬ 
ized by the constitution. Never before in any constitutional government 
was the organic law put under the guardianship of the judiciary. This 
is a feature purely American, and of value incalculable for the protection 
of individual rights. 

“In the category of these individual rights I conceive that the greatest 
achievement ever made in the cause of human progress is the total and 
final separation of the State from the Church. If we had nothing else 
to boast of, we could claim with justice that first among the nations we 
of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between 
man and his Maker were a private concern into which other-men had no 
right to intrude. 

“* * * Besides this great act of deliverance, we have emancipated woman 
from the dominion of her husband; we have freed the honest debtor 
from the possibility of passing his Ife in prison; we have rendered it im¬ 
possible for legislation to make that act a crime which was not a crime 
when it was committed; we have forbidden the States to impair the 
obligation of a contract between man and man; we have proclaimed 
from sea to sea that all men are created equal in rights, and that among 
these rights are the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; 
we have imbedded in the fundamental law of the land as principles 
inviolable and eternal, that no man can be deprived of these rights 
without due process of law, and that all are entitled to the equal pro¬ 
tection of the laws.” 

—Before the Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, 1893. 

Lincoln: “Lincoln was the most-sided man, I think, I ever met.” 

Tilden: “His was one of the keenest, analytical minds I have ever 
known.” 

Greeley: “Greeley was a very great man in some ways, and a very 
weak one in others.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


281 


JUSTICE 

“Above all things is justice. Success is a good thing; wealth is good, 
honor is better; but justice excels them all. It is this which raises man 
above the brute, and brings him into communion with his Maker. To 
be able to stand impartial in judgment amid circumstances which 
excite the passions; to maintain your equipoise, however surging the 
currents around you, is to have reached the highest elevation of the in¬ 
tellect and the affections. To have the power of forgetting, for the time, 
self, friends, interests, relationship, and to think only of doing right 
toward another, a stranger, an enemy, perhaps, is to have that which 
man can share only with the angels, and Avith Him who is above men and 
angels.” 

—From speech in the Wm. M. Tweed case—a suit for $6,000,000, 
in 1865. 


U. S. SUPREME COURT PRESUMED TO KNOW THE LAW 

“We are compelled to know, or are supposed to know—but I am 
very sorry to say we don’t know at all—the law. We are supposed to take 
judicial cognizance of all questions of international law, of treaties, of 
prize laws, and of the laws of nations generally. We take notice of it 
without its being specially pleaded. We take notice of the laws and 
statutes of every State of these thirty-eight states of the Union. They are 
not to be proA^ed in our courts; they are not brought in issue, but the judge 
of the Federal courts, from the lowest one to the highest, is supposed to 
take judicial cognizance of all the statute laws, and to know them, 
of the whole thirty-eight states of the Union, and of the eight Territories 
besides. In addition to that, we are supposed to take notice of the 
common law of the country. We take notice of the equity principles, 
and we apply them now in separate courts notwithstanding you have 
combined them in your processes in the state courts. We are supposed to 
understand the civil law on which Texas and Louisiana have framed their 
systems of laws; and we are supposed to understand all the other laws, 
as I said, of the States, divergent and varied as they are. We do the best 
Ave can to understand them; but, gentlemen, permit me to say that, 
but for the bar which practices before us; but for the lawyers who come up 
from New York and Pennsylvania, and from the States of the West and 
of the South, to tell us what the law is; but for the instruction and aid 
which they afford us, our duties would be but poorly fulfilled. 

“I take pleasure in saying that a bar or set of men superior in infor¬ 
mation, in the desire to impart that information to the court, a set of 
gentlemen in the legal profession more instructive in their arguments, 
could hardly be found in any country in the world. I doubt whether 
their equals are found, when you consider the variety of the knowledge 
which they must present to us, the topics which they discuss, the sources 
from which they derive the matter which they lay before us. I say 
that it is with pleasure that the court relies upon the lawyers of the country 
to enable it to preform its high function.” 

— Afr. Justice Samuel F. Miller, before N. Y. State Bar Ass'n, 

Albany, N. Y., Nov. 20, 1878. 



JUSTICE STEPHEN J. FIELD (1816-1899), California 


THE U. S. SUPREME COURT—THE BULWARK OF 
THE REPUBLIC 

“As I look over the more than a third of a century that I have sat on 
this bench, I am more and more impressed with the immeasurable im¬ 
portance of this Court, now and then we hear it spoken of as an aristo¬ 
cratic feature of a republican government. But it is the most democratic 
of all. Senators represent their States, and Representatives their con¬ 
stituents, but this Court stands for the whole country, and as such it is 
truly ‘of the people.’ It has, indeed, no power to legislate. It cannot 
appropriate a dollar of money. It carries neither the purse nor the sword. 
But it possesses the power of declaring the law and in that is found the 
safeguard which keeps the whole mighty fabric of government from rush¬ 
ing to destruction. This negative power, the power of resistance, is the 
only safety of a popular government, and it is an additional assurance 
when the power is in such hands.”— Justice Stephen J. Field. 

Judge Field’s term upon the Supreme Bench exceeded that of Chief 
Justice Marshall by a month and 10 days, as Judge Field served 343^ 
years, and with his 6 years as Supreme Judge of the State of California, 
served 403^ years as Supreme Judge of State and Nation. 

Justice Field once said to J. S. Black: “You had better look to your 
laurels, for that little Jew from New Orleans, Judah P. Benjamin, has 
stated your ease out of court.” 

FIELD WAS CRITICAL, RATHER THAN CONSTRUCTIVE/ 

“Judge Field’s powers were critical rather than constructive. He 
acted principally as a curb or check upon the centralizing tendencies 
of his associates, being the most powerful advocate in the court of 
the doctrine of state, that is, of local government as far as was consistent 
with national strength.” 

—Horace Stern, on Justice Field, 7 * Great Ain. Jjawyers,' 53. 


KINDS OF ORATORY 

“Wendell Phillips was a rhetorical orator; John B. Gough and Henry 
Ward Beecher dramatic orators. Charles G. Finney demonstrated to 
me that one could be an effective speaker without being either rhetorical 
or dramatic.”— Ahhott's Reminiscences, 220. 



JOHN FITZGIBBON, lord claire (1749-1802,) Ireland 


INCOME 

From 1772 to 1789 (17 years), Fitzgibbon received from his profession 
$230,000. In 1782, his income was $33,570. He fought a duel with Curran 
in the early part of his career. 

—1 ShieVs ^Sketches of the Irish Barf 67 note. 

SHOUTS OF JOY OVER HIS COFFIN 

“When he was buried in Ireland, three shouts of joy were given over 
his coffin; he had threatened to make the Irish people ‘tame as cats,’ 
and the exasperated thousands who gladly witnessed the close of his 
career flung heaps of dead cats upon Ms coffin.” 

—1 ShieVs ^Sketches of the Irish Barf 132, note. 

LECKY ON LORD CLAIRE 

“He was a ready and powerful debater, and a man of great personal 
courage and force of character, but he never seems to have been suspected, 
even by his friends, of any patriotic feelings; his intellect was narrow 
and intolerant, and Ms temper ungovernably violent. He had been at 
one time considered a Liberal, and owed his promotion in a great degree 
to Grattan, whom he afterwards attacked with the utmost virulence. 
Like many Irishmen of the later time, he had the habit of constantly 
depreciating and villifying Ms country—‘our damnable country’— as 
he described it in a letter to Lord Castlereagh,—and he was a bitter 
enemy of the Catholics. He was remarkable for an arrogance of tone, 
which in debate is said sometimes to have almost verged upon in¬ 
sanity, and for the reckless manner in which he displayed his personal 
antipathies upon the bench; and he scandalized the Irish Parliament by 
the perfect frankness with wMeh he justified a policy of corruption, and 
the English House of Lords, by his apology for the use of torture against 
the rebels of 1798. Probably no Irishman of his generation was so hated, 
and when he died the popular delight broke out (as it afterward did in 
England, at the death of Castlereagh) in a kind of Mdeous carnival 
around Ms coffin. He was, however, quite capable of generous actions, 
and showed on one or two occasions real humanity toward State prisoners 
in 1798; and his rare skill in stating a case, and his indomitable courage 
in meeting opposition, made him extremely useful to the Ministry. 
For many years he was almost absolute in the House of Lords, and after 
Lord Castlereagh he contributed most to passing the Union. ^ It is, 
however, curiously illustrative of the tortuous skill with which the 
Administration of Pitt was conducted, that Claire, when apparently 
the very leader of the Ministerial party, was kept in complete ignorance 
of the secret overtures that were made to the Catholic prelates, and the 
intentions of the Minister to make the Union the prelude to emancipation.” 

— Becky's ^Leaders of Public Men in Irelandf 166. 

(See under “Curran,” his denunciation of Lord Claire, under the 
caption—“Minion of Authority.”) 


JOHN H. FLANIGAN (1857-1915) Missouri 


“BEWHISKERED KANSAS IN 1910” 

Carthage, Mo., Aug. 15, 1910. 

“Mr. A. G. Hanback, 

Baxter Springs, Kansas. 

Dear Sir: 

I have yours of the 15th instant, in which you invite me to attend and 
deliver an address at your reunion on August 31. 

It is always a pleasure to be so remembered and for this action on your 
part I express my thanks. 

But I would not fit the ‘spot’ in Kansas this year. 

I spoke at your reunion in 1896 when Kansas was on one of her periodical 
‘jags.’ Then it was free silver and populism. I think I need not remind 
you that my talk did not please every Kansan who heard it; and this year, 
when Kansas is libeling the party of Lincoln, Grant and McKinley by 
running a lot of free trade populistic nondescripts on the Republican 
ticket for Congress, I should, I am sure, please certain Kansans less, if 
possible, than I did in 1896, if I expressed my opinion as I should vote 
this year were I an elector in certain Kansas districts. 

I have seen Kansas elect a Leedy for governor. 

I have seen Kansas prefer a lot of hair and whiskers (the name I have 
forgotten) over the immortal Ingalls. 

I have seen Kansas cast her electoral vote for Bryan over the martyred 
McKinley. 

I have seen Kansas almost deify Mary Ellen Lease, and shout herself 
hoarse for Jim Weaver and the Rag Baby. 

I see Kansas, alleged Republican Kansas, this year fanning the dying 
embers of Bryanism—the guaranty of bank deposits—while Republican 
America is striving to guaranty the citizens in having something to deposit. 

I have seen Kansas follow every idiotic ‘ism’ which has come to the 
surface in my generation. I have seen Kansas drunk before; this year 
over her Bristows and Murdocks she is maudlin. 

No! this year I have nothing in common with Kansas. Wait till she 
gets sober; wait till a two-year-old sells for seven dollars; till a full-grown 
hog is worth two dollars; till wheat sells for forty cents a bushel, and corn 
is worth ten cents: then Kansas will come rushing back to the Grand Old 
Party for relief, and swear she has been leading all the time. 

Kansas is never thoughtful till she’s ‘broke,’ then more than half the 
time she only thinks she’s thinking, and is mistaken about it. 

Yours truly, 

John H. Flanigan.” 


THOUGHT 

“The sober second thought of the people is seldom wrong.” 

—Martin Van Buren. 

Martin Van Buren, of N. Y. (1782-1862) was known as “a northern 
man with southern principles.” “The Little Magician.” His early 
practice made him financially independent. Was an early disciple of the 
Clintons, Robt. R. Livingston and Aaron Burr, and later of Andrew 
Jackson. President of the U. S. 1837-1841. 



SIR WILLIAM FOLLETT (1798-1845), England 

HIS VERSATILITY 

Mr. J ollett exhibited at the English Bar what was considered the 
most remarkable professional versatility of our times.” 

— Geo. T. Curtis—in Memoirs of R. B. Curtis, 96. 

(See Notice of Follett, Brougham’s Works, Vol. 6; also Britannica). 
HIS EPHEMERAL CAREER 

After reviewing Follett’s professional career, Talfourd, his friend 
in his ‘Vaction Rambles,’ usually pronounced so brilliant, mournfully 
inquires: 

‘‘What remains? A name dear to the affections of a few friends; 
a waning image of a modest and earnest speaker, though decidedly the 
head of the common law bar; and the splendid example of a success em¬ 
bodied in a fortune of 200,000 pounds ($1,000,000), acquired in ten years, 
the labors of which hastened the extinction of his life; these are all the 
world possesses of Sir William Follett. To mankind, to his country, 
to his profession, he left nothing; not a measure conceived, not a danger 
averted, not a principle vindicated; not a speech intrinsically worth 
preservation; not a striking image, nor an affecting sentiment; in his 
death the power of mortality is supreme. How strange—how sadly 
strange—that a course so splendid should end in darkness so obscure!” 

(See Judge John F. Dillon’s article in Sep.-Oct. American Law Re¬ 
view—the same being delivered by Judge Dillon, before Am. Bar Ass’n., 
at Saratoga, N. Y., Aug. 22, ’94—on ‘The Contrast between Follett and 
David Dudley Field.’) 

LORD COLERIDGE ON FOLLETT 

“With Follett I had more familiar relations. I saw his whole course, 
standing near to it in its commencement and up to my quitting the bar. 
I was deeply interested in observing it, and I early predicted his future 
eminence. No man, I suppose, ever heard or desired to have access 
more complete in proportion to the time be was in the profession; had 
his health been continued to him, he would have filled entirely the place 
at the bar which Sir James Scarlett had left, and I think still leaves un¬ 
filled; he wanted his literature, his science, his variety of legal learning, 
and his great experience, not only in legal practice, but in general life; 
but he was his equal in the ready appreciation of facts and in the sound¬ 
ness of his legal principles. He would, I think, have become even a 
better speaker, for he was equally natural and apparently free from 
artifice, and yet he was more capable of earnest and sustained decla¬ 
mation: his voice was sweet, his action good. Neither as a lawyer nor 
as a legislator has he left any lasting monument behind him of his great 
abilities; the gainful business of the day swallowed him up. Like ‘a 
well-graced actor,’ the admired one of his day, he lives only in the recol¬ 
lections of one fleeting generation who saw him. We have a distinct 
idea of him as our fathers had of Garrick; henceforward a mere tradition 
of him as our fathers had of Garrick; henceforward a mere tradition of 
him will remain—tradition becoming every year more uncertain, obscure, 
indiscriminate.” 

—12 Am. Law Review—Article upo7i Scarlett, by C. H. Hill, p. 57. 


JOSEPH BENSON FORAKER (1846-1917), Ohio 

PRESIDENT’S FOUR-YEAR TERM BEST 

“Ex-President Taft is reported in the newspapers (Feb., 1915) as making 
speeches and delivering addresses and lectures in different parts of the 
country in which among other things he has been advocating a seven 
years’ Presidential term; from this it appears that in spite of all his in¬ 
structive experience, he has not yet become a good judge of the proper 
psychological moment for bringing forward new propositions; for at 
the very moment when he is again bringing this subject to notice the 
great majority of the American people are impatiently counting the days 
until there will come another opportunity for making a change of Presi¬ 
dents and policies. Some unforeseen event may change all this; all things 
are possible; especially to the party in power and able to take advantage 
of constantly arising opportunities to respond to public sentiment, but 
the probability is that the score against President Wilson is now too 
long for him to have enough good luck to overcome it. It is true Presi¬ 
dential elections are bothersome and expensive, but it is also true that 
now and then people would gladly pay for the privilege of holding such 
an election, if they did not have it secured to them by the Constitution, 
any price, almost, that the wildest imagination might name. It was so 
under Cleveland. It is so now, under Wilson. It has been so a number 
of other times. Elections cost millions; but there come times when they 
are worth hundreds of millions.. If today we had to wait five more years 
instead of two, before we could have a Presidential election, it would 
be hard to exaggerate the despondency, gloom and despair with which 
the minds of our business men would be filled—except those who have 
‘war orders.’ 

“But there is a great compensation for the trouble and cost of our 
elections, aside from all money or business considerations in the fact 
that they are not only educational as to the issues involved, but also 
wholesome in a patriotic sense; on account of this feature they are not 
only invaluable, but indispensable in a free popular government. George 
Washington and his compatriots who constituted the Convention that 
framed our organic law were a wise, conscientious and patriotic body. 
They knew what they were doing when they fixed the respective terms 
for the offices they created. The passing years continually admonish 
us to make haste slowly in changing their work.” 

—Joseph Benson Foraker, 0., (184-6-1917). 

“Enlisted as a private in an Ohio regiment at 16, and served till the close 
of Civil War; graduated at Cornell, at 23; began practice of the law, at 
33; was judge of the superior court, Cincinnati, ’79 to ’82; Governor 
of Ohio, ’85-’87; elected to U. S. Senate, ’96, and re-elected 1902; delegate 
from O. in all national conventions from ’84 to 1900, and chairman from 
’84 to ’88; in 1896 and 1900, nominated McKinley for President; opposed 
legislation against corporations in Senate; was a bitter critic of Presi¬ 
dent Cleveland’s proposal to restore the Confederate fiags to their regi¬ 
ments, and became known as ‘fire-alarm’ Foraker.” 

—2 ^ Notes of a Busy Lifef pp. 3-4-- 


CHAS JAS. FOX (1749-1806), England 


Lord Thurlow: “No man is so wise as Lord Thurlow looks.” 

— Chas. Jas. Fox. 

Saysphas. Jar»es Fox: “Dunning, in 1778 (then 47) was the greatest 
practicing lawyer then alive in England.” 

WHEN HE CEASED GAMBLING 

“At the age of 25, Fox ceased to gamble, lived contented within his 
slender means, as he had despoiled himself of a younger son’s landed 
estate. His home life with the woman he loved—both before and after 
he married her—was admired by his unconscious contemporaries as a 
model of domestic affection and mutual sympathy in the insatiable 
enjoyment of good literature and great rural pleasures.” 

— Trevdyan's Life of George III., and Charles Fox. 37. 

GIBBON’S MEETING WITH FOX 

“When Fox was about forty he paid a visit to Gibbon, in his pleasant 
hermitage at Lausanne, Switzerland, and the historian who had con¬ 
versed with most English, and not a few European celebrities, and who 
knew all that could be told in books about the best and greatest men 
of many ages and countries —declared that no human being was ever 
more perfectly exempt than Mr. Fox from the taint of malevolence, 
vanity and falsehood.” 

—1 Trevelyads Life of Geo. III., and Fox, 37. 

USED NO ARGUMENT—EXCEPT IT WAS JUST AND WEIGHTY 

“Fox’s nature was such that he instinctively refrained from using 
in controversy any argument which he himself did not believe to be just 
and weighty, and his fairness and sincerity carried persuasion to others.” 

—1 Trevelyan’s Life of Geo. III., and Charles Fox, 87. 


ROMAN HISTORY 

“I wish I could spend tlu’ee months instead of three weeks here (in 
Rome). I should like to get out of my library Mommsen’s ‘History of 
Rome’ to revive my knowledge of its general history, Fronde’s ‘Caesar’ 
to give me a picture of the city in the first century. Gibbon’s ‘Decline 
and Fair to carry the picture down to the time of Marcus Aurelius, 
Bryce’s ‘Holy Roman Empire’ to recall the part played in the first few 
centuries of the Christian era, Creighton’s ‘History of the Popes’ to re¬ 
read his description of its social and religious condition under the Borgias, 
Lanciam’s ‘New Tales of Old Rome’ to connect all this history with its 
present topography and remains, and Countess Cesaresco’s ‘Liberation 
of Italy’ to bring before me in brief its most recent political history. 
Probably this would only whet my appetite for a much more thorough 
study than would be possible with only these books and only tlu’ee months 
to study in.” 

'—Lyman .Abbott's ^Impressions of a Careless Traveler', 151-2. 



WM. P. FRYE (1831-1911), Maine 

WM. P. PYRE’S NOMINATION OF BLAINE, 

AT CHICAGO, ILL., 1880 

“I once saw a storm at sea in the night-time; an old ship batthng^ for 
its life with the fury of the tempest; darkness everywhere; the winds 
raging and howling: the huge waves beating on the sides of the ship, 
and making her shiver from stern to stern. The lightning was flashing, 
the thunders roUing; there was danger everywhere. I saw at the.h^li^i 
a bold, courageous, immovable, commanding man. In the tempest, 
calm; in the commotion, quiet; in the danger, hopeful. I saw him take 
that old ship and bring her into her harbor, into still waters, with safety. 
That man was a hero. I saw the good old ship of State, the State of 
Maine, within the last year, flghting her way through the same waves, 
against the dangers. She was freighted with all that is precious in the 
principles of our republic; with the rights of American citizenship, with 
all that is guaranteed to the American citizen by our Constitution. 

“The eyes of the whole nation were on her, and intense anxiety filled 
every American heart lest the grand old ship, the ‘State of Maine’ might 
go down beneath the waters forever, carrying her precious freight with 
her. But there was a man at the helm, calm, deliberate, commanding, 
sagacious; he made even the foolish man wise; courageous, he inspired 
even the timid with courage; hopeful, he gave heart to the discouraged, 
and he brf)ught that good old ship safely into harbor, into safety; and she 
floats today greater, purer, stronger for her baptism of danger. That 
man, too, was heroic, and his name was James G. Blaine. 

“Maine sent us to this magnificient convention with a memory of her 
own salvation from impending peril fresh upon her. To you representa¬ 
tives of 50,000,000 of the American people, who have met here to counsel 
how the Republic can be saved, she says:—‘Representatives of the people, 
take the man, the true man, the staunch man, for your leader who has 
just saved me, and he will bring you to safety and certain victory.” 


CHANCELLOR REUBEN H. WALWORTH ON 
’ COAL-DUST NUISANCE 

“The allegation in the bill of this subject, tho it is a little poetical, 
cannot be considered a mere poetic fiction, as it is sworn to by the com¬ 
plainant, and is admitted by the demurrer. He there states that large 
quantities of volatile and offensive dust and smut from the coal rise in 
the air, and are diffused by the wind into the premises of the neighboring 
inhabitants. And in spite of all their care, such coal dust and smut 
not only settles upon their walks and their grass plats, but also on their 
fragrant plants and flowers, ‘beclouding the brightness and beauty 
which a beneficent Creator has given to make them pleasant to the eye, 
and cheering to the heart of man.’ But what must be still more offensive 
to the ladies of the neighborhood, ‘this filthy coal-dust settles upon their 
doorsteps, thresholds and windows, and enters into their dwellings, and 
into their carpets, their cups, their kneading-troughs, their beds, their 
bosoms and their lungs, discoloring their linen and their otherwise stain¬ 
less raiment and robes of beauty and comfort, defacing their furniture 
and blackening, besmearing and injuring every object of utility, of beauty 
and of taste.’ Making all due allowance for the coloring which the 
pleader has given to this naturally dark picture, it is perfectly certain 
that this keeping of a coal-yard upon any of these lots is a business offen¬ 
sive to the neighboring inhabitants, according to the spirit and intent 
of these restrictive covenants.” — Barrow v. Richard, 8 Page, 360-1, 18^0. 



MELVILLE W. FULLER (1833-1919), Illinois 

SAMUEL J. TILDEN EULOGIZED 

“Since the days of Jefferson and Franklin this country has not had a 
statesman whose pen could delineate so accurately and so simply a 
principle, a pohcy, or a hne of conduct. What the people need is some¬ 
body who can teU them with accuracy and simphcity just what they 
themselves think. This is the secret of Mr. Tilden’s great popularity 
with the masses, the existence of which eminent jackasses in our party 
have often denied, and do not seem to comprehend now that they are 
beginning to be driven to concede it. There are always pohtical prophets 
(I don’t mean to speak irreverently) looking for power in the wind, or 
the earthquake, or the fire, instead of the still, small voice. Now, the 
question of Mr. Tilden’s health presents itself about which I know 
’absolutely nothing. His age is no objection. Cato learned Greek at 
eighty, and Goethe completed ‘Faust’ after he had passed eighty, 
Taney and Shaw dehvered judgments when nearly ninety. Look 
at John Quincy Adams and Gladstone and ‘Old Palm.’ Why, 
Lord Palmerston at the age of eighty saved his administration by a 
masterly speech delivered without a note, in the early hours of the 
morning. And speaking of him, McCarthy, in his ‘History of our Own 
Times,’ commences the chapter on the death of Lord Palmerston with 
the quotation, ‘Unram, Eros, the long day’s task is done and we must 
sleep.’ Mr. 'Tilden’s days have not been so long by eleven years. Is 
his task done ? The unfinished window in Aladin’s tower must not re¬ 
main unfinished. The art of prolonging fife hes in an object to be attained. 
I admit that various things are to be taken into consideration as assist¬ 
ing in sustaining health, and in that way prolonging mere existence; 
but all these, while mere adjuncts to vegetation, really amount to nothing 
if there be not a sufficent object for living outside of keeping one’s self 
on this side of the river. I can conceive of no higher object than the 
attainment of the Chief Magistracy with the view of benefiting the 
people of this Repubhc. Here I do Mr. Tilden justice. He is now at 
an age when he doubtless feels that merely being President is in itself 
vanity. That doll is stuffed with saw-dust, just as all other dolls are 
found to be by all men, children of a larger growth. But, if he can, by 
being I^esident, benefit this people by saving their institutions, now in 
utmost peril, by reforming the methods of administration, by teaching 
both the great parties, and, in an especial degree, his own, that ad¬ 
herence to principle is as desirable in a party as in an individual, etc., 
etc., is that not an object worthy the attainment of any man? And 
is it not an object that would prolong life, and not bring it to termination? 
I am very much mistaken, if renomination and election, and admims- 
tration would not do Mr. Tilden good. * * * Napoleon said—‘Imagination 
rules the world,’ and you may depend upon it, that sentiment cuts no 
inconsiderable part in all elections. It must be taken in solution, it is 
true, but it is a necessary ingredient. Apart from the necessity of the 
‘old ticket,’ it has great strength because it w the old ticket. There is 
a certain sense of justice that has gone unsatisfied since March, 1877, 
and you blunt its edge, if you change the ticket.” 

—Letter to W. H. Barnum, Chairman of the Nat'l Democratic 

Committee, Chicago, Dec. 2S, 1883; 2 ‘ Tilden's letters and Literary 
‘ Memorials,' 635-8. 

Mr. Fuller was born in 1833, in Augusta, Me., of a family of legal 
antecedents; graduated at Bowdoin, in 1853, and studied law at Harvard; 
from 1855 to 1858 he practiced law in Augusta; was city attorney and 


290 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


member of the common council, and editor of the Augusta Age, a rival 
of Jas. G. Blaine’s Kennebec Journal; removed to Chicago in 1856; 
was a member of the Ill. Constitutional Convention; acted as delegate 
to the Democratic Nat’l Convention, 1864, 1872, 1876, and 1880. In 
1876 he nominated Thos. A. Hendricks to a place on the ticket with 
S. J. Tilden. He defended Rev. Dr. Cheney when tried for heresy; in 
1888, he was appointed Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, which 
he held till death—twenty-two years. 


THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

“The supreme Court of the United States, if it is nothing else, certainly 
is a hard-working court. It is a court of which a great deal is required; 
and is some solace for the hard work that we have to do, that we are 
supposed to be a court of a good deal of dignity and of a very high char¬ 
acter. I hope you all concur. Just consider what the jurisdiction of that > 
court is. There have come before that court often. States—States which 
in the old ante-bellum times we called ‘Sovereign States’—and some of 
them did not come voluntarily. They were brought by the process of 
that court. And when one State of the Union has a question of juridical 
cognizance against another State of the Union, it must come to that 
court. A subpoena is sent, and it is brought into that court just like an 
individual, and it must, by the constitution of this country, submit its 
rights and territorial jurisdiction, and the right which accompanies that 
territorial jurisdiction, to the decision of that Supreme Court. Except 
the great court which sat on Mount Olympus, I know of no other which 
has ever had the right to decide, and compel States to submit to its 
decision. It is within our province to declare a law of one of these sover¬ 
eign States; and that is a function of daily occurrence. What other court 
in the world has that power ? To what other court has ever been submitted 
such a function as that—to declare the legislation of a State hke New 
York, with five milhons of population, and other States verging upon the 
same amount of population and wealth, to declare that the laws which 
you have passed in the ordinary discharge of your powers as legislators, 
are null and void ? It is a great power. We not only do that, but we decide 
that the laws which the Congress of the United States shall pass are void, 
if they confiict with that instrument under which we all live and move 
and have our being. Though we approach these subjects with regretful 
hesitation, it is a duty from which the court has never shrunk, and from 
which I presume it never will shrink as long as that court has its existence.’’ 

—Justice Samuel F. Miller, at banquet at N. Y. State Bar Ass'n, at 

Albany, N. Y., Nov. 20, 1878 



JAMES A. GARFIELD (1831-1881), Ohio 

SOCIETY 

Society resembles the waves of the ocean, whose every drop may 
move freely among its fellows, and may rise toward the light until it 
flashes on the crest of the highest wave.”—James A. Garfield. 

“GOVERNMENT STILL LIVES” 

“Fellow-citizens —Clouds and darkness are round about Him. His 
Pavillion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. Justice and 
judgment are the establishment of his throne. Mercy and truth shall go 
Deforce his face. God reigns, and the government at Washington still 
lives. 

—At a meeting in front of the Merchants' Exchange, N. Y. City, 
Apr. 15, 1865 —the day of Lincoln's death. {The effect of this speech 
was instantaneous in quieting the mob.) 

A RADICAL 

“I am trying to do two things —dare to be a radical and not be a fool: 
which if I may judge by the exhibitions around me, is a matter of no small 
difficulty.” 

GARFIELD NOMINATING SHERMAN 

“I have seen the sea lashed into a fury and tossed into a spray, and 
its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it 
is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and 
depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm 
settles on the ocean, when sunhght bathes the smoother surface, then 
the astronomer and smveyor takes the level from which he measures 
all terrestial heights and depths. 

“Gentlem.en of the convention, your present temper may not mark 
the healthful pulse of our people. When our enthusiasm has passed, 
when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm 
level of public opinion below the storm from which the thoughts of a 
mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will 
be determined. Not here in this brilliant circle where 15,000 men and 
women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; 
not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of 756 delegates waiting to 
cast their votes into the urn and determine the choice of their party; 
but by the 4,000,000 Republican firesides, where the thoughtful fathers, 
with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired 
by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past, the 
hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned 
and blessed our nation in days gone by—there God prepared the verdict 
that shall determine the wisdom of our work tonight. Not in Chicago 
in the heat of June, but in the sober quiet that cotmes between now 
and the melancholy days of November, in the silence of deliberate judg¬ 
ment wiU the great question be settled. Let us aid them tonight. * * * 

“Now, gentlemen, 1 am about to present a name for your consideration— 
the name of a man who was the comrade and associate and friend of 
nearly all those noble dead whose faces look down upon us from these 
walls tonight; a man who began his career of public service twenty- 
five years ago, whose first duty was courageously done in the days of 
peril on the plains of Kansas, when the first red drops of that bloody 


202 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


shower began to fall which finally swelled into the deluge of war. He 
bravely stood by young Kansas then, and, returning to his duty in the 
national legislature, through all subsequent time, his pathway has been 
marked by labors performed in every department of legislation. You 
ask for his monuments. I point you to twenty-five years of national 
statutes, not one beneficent statute has been placed in our statute- 
books without his inteUigent and powerful aid. * * * The great fiscal 
affairs of the nation, and the great business interests of the country, 
he has guarded and preserved, while executing the law of resumption 
and affecting its object without a jar and against the false prophecies 
of one-half the press and all the Democracy of this continent. He has 
shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the 
Government for twenty-five years. He has trodden the perilous heights 
of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breath 
unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of ‘that fierce fight that beats 
against the throne,’ but its fiercest ray has found no fiaw in his armor, 
no stain on his shield. I do not present him as a better Republican or as 
a better man than thousands of others we honor, but I present him for 
your deliberate consideration. I nominate John Sherman of Ohio.” 
— Jas. A. Garfield, in National Republican Convention at Chicago, 
June, 1880. The above is part of the speech that made Garfield, him¬ 
self, President. 

INDEPENDENCE IN POLITICS 

“The flowers that bloom over the garden waU of party politics, are the 
sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of the world.” 

THE GERM OF GOVERNMENT 

“Whence came the immortal truth of the declaration? To me this 
was for years the riddle of our history. I have searched long and patiently 
through the books of the doctrinaires to find the germs from which the 
declaration of Independence sprang. I find hints in Locke, in Hobbes, 
in Rousseau, and Fenelon; but they were on the hints of dreamers and 
philosophers. The great doctrines of the Declaration germinated in 
the new influences of this wilderness world, by the same subtle mystery 
wMch brings forth the rose from the germ of the rose tree. Uncon¬ 
sciously to themselves, the great truths were growing under the new 
conditions, until, like the century plant, they blossomed into the matchless 
beauty of the Declaration of Independence, whose fruitage, increased 
and increasing, we enjoy today.”— In the Senate of the United States. 

“IT CAN’T BE DONE” 

“Dr. Lardner wrote an able treatise to prove that it was impossible 
to navigate the ocean by steam. He said that no ship could carry coal 
enough to steam across the Atlantic; that it was one of the mathematical 
impossibilities. But, it is an interesting fact that the proof-sheets of 
his scientific work were brought to the United States in the first steamer 
that crossed the Atlantic.”— In speech by Garfield. 

JAS. G. BLAINE’S EULOGY 

“As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The 
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of 
pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive, 
stiffing air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, 
the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


293 


of the sea, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its mani¬ 
fold voices. With wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, 
Im looked out vdstfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders; on its far 
sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shore¬ 
ward. to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of 
evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway 
of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning 
which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in 
the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves brealdng on 
a further shore and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the 
eternal morning.” 

—In the House of Representatives, Feb. 27, 1882. Blaine was then 
Garfield's Secretary of State. 

A CHILD’S EDUCATION 

“That man will be a benefactor of his race who shall teach us how to 
manage rightly the first years of a child’s education. I, for one, declare 
that no child of mine shall ever be compelled to study one hour, or to 
learn even the English alphabet, before he has deposited under his skin 
at least seven years of muscle and bone.” 

—From an Address on College Ediication, at Hiram College, 0., 
June Ilf, 1867. 

MONEY 

“Money, which is a universal measure of value and a medium of ex¬ 
change, must not be confounded with credit currency in any of its forms. 
Nothing is really money that does not of itself possess the full value which 
it professes on its face to possess. Length can be measured only by a 
standard which in itself possesses length. Weight can be measured only 
by a standard, defined and recognized, which in itself possesses weight. 
So, also value can be measured only by that which in itself possesses a 
definite and known value. The precious metals, coined and stamped, 
form the money of the world, because when thrown into the melting-pot 
and cast into bars they will sell in the market as metal for the same amount 
that they will pass for in the market as coined money. The coining and 
stamping are but a certificate by the government of the quantity and 
fineness of the metal stamped. The coining certifies to the value, 
but neither creates it nor adds to it.” 

—From speech in the House of Rep., June 7, 1870, on ^Currency 
and the Banks.' 

THE HOME, THE SCHOOL AND THE CHURCH 

“There are three forces that must be brought to bear in the settlement 
of this agricultural problem—the home, the school and the church—and 
they are our trinity of saving influences. Among the American products 
which I saw at the great Paris Exposition in 1867, none so stirred my 
pride as an American as the farmer’s home and the schoolhouse, which 
some thoughtful citizen of the U. S. had erected on the Exposition grounds. 
To the European laborer we were able to say: ‘Go to America, and we 
will give you 160 acres of land. You can build on it such a house as this 
for S800, and there will be erected near it, at the public expense, such a 
school house as that, where your children may be educated without 
cost to you, except in the taxes you pay.’ That spectacle preached a 
louder sermon than the guns of Gravelotte or Sedan. Make the farmer’s 
home the abode of industry and thrift, such as farm labor can make it; 
of intelligence and culture, such as our schools and public press can make 
it; and of purity and truth, such as a broad and unsectarian religion can 
make it; and you will have solved the questions that I have raised. 


294 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“And now a word td the young men who may hear me. Get intelli¬ 
gence, culture, conscience; of intelligence and culture; and then get 
ground to stand on, ground of your own, and hire out to yourself. Be 
your own master and pay yourself the wages you earn, and put the 
profits of your labor into your own pocket. Do not forever be commanded. 
Command something, if it be only a horse and dray. Be assured that in 
your own brain and arm lie your fortune and fame. Look to yourself 
for resources, and whatever you do, let it be only in the last extremity 
that you go to Washington after a clerkship.” 

—From an Address on ^American Agriculture,’ at Northern Ohio 
Fair, Cleveland, 0., Oct. 12, 1870. 

JAMES A GARFIELD 

Poverty. “Poverty is uncomfortable, as I myself can testify; but 
nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is 
to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.” 

' GARFIELD 

“Ideas control the world.” 

f 

“He who would understand the real spirit of literature should not 
select authors of any one period alone, but rather go to the fountain head, 
and trace the little rill as it courses along down the ages, broadening and 
deepening into the great ocean of thought which the men of the present 
are exploring.” 

“I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed 
in everything else.” 

“The sanctity of marriage and the family relation make the corner¬ 
stone of our American society and civilization.” 

“Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of parties 
and cannot be evaded by them. They declare themselves and come out 
of the depths of that deep which we call public opinion.” 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

“A character so unique that he stands alone, without a model in history 
or a parallel among men. Born to an inheritance of extremest poverty; 
surrounded by the rude forces of the wilderness; wholly unaided by 
parents; only one year in any school, never for a day master of his own 
time until he reached his majority; making his way to the profession of 
the law by the hardest and roughest road; yet by force of unconquerable 
will and persistent patient work he attained a foremost place in his pro¬ 
fession.” 

—From Address on ^Lincoln and Emancipation,' H. R., Washing¬ 
ton, D. C., Feb. 12, 1878. 


AGUSTUS H. GARLAND (1832-1899), Arkansas 

GARLAND’S ADVICE TO YOUNG LAWYERS 

“A young lawyer should continue his professional studies with as much 
care and unremitting attention as when he was a student proper; making 
and preserving notes of his readings; attending, when possible, proceed¬ 
ings of an important character in the courts. His reading outside of 
the law should be mainly in aid of it; adhering to the law for itself, and 
not as an object secondary and auxiliary to something else; and making 
his client’s cause his own, without reservation, and rendering his first 
duty to him. Punctuality to the moment in all engagements should be 
observed: it is an essential to any great success in the law. A kind 
respect and regard should be studiously cultivated toward his brothers 
in the profession, the officers of the courts before which he seeks to appear, 
as well as the judges of those courts. An even temper should be preserved 
in his bearing before the courts and in no case should he endeavor to 
argue a question after the court has decided it; and in all instances, 
short, close and terse arguments should be made, and this done, submit 
the matter to the court without further talk.” 

He was elected to the U. S. Senate, in 1867, and was not allowed to take 
his seat, under the “Test Oath Act.” He brought suit against the con¬ 
stitutionality of the act, retaining as counsel, Reverdy Johnson and Matt 
H. Carpenter; but his own argument in this case, ex parte Garland, 
4 Wall., 333, made him famous. He subsequently represented the State 
in the U. S. Senate for two terms; elected govenor of Ark., in ’74; Attorney- 
General in Cleveland’s Cabinet, ’87, holding the office four years. 


WEBSTER INDUCED LEMUEL SHAW TO BECOME JUDGE OF 
THE SUPREME COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS 

“I approached him upon the subject,” said Webster. “He was almost 
offended at the suggestion.” “Do you suppose,” said he, “that I am 
going, at my time of life, to take an office that has so much responsibility 
attached to it for the paltry sum of $3,000 a year?” “You have some 
property (Shaw’s practice than amounted to $20,000 a year), and can 
afford to take it,” Webster replied. “I shall not take it under any cir¬ 
cumstances,” was his answer. “I used every argument I could think 
of. I plied him in every possible way, and had interview after interview 
with him. He smoked and smoked, and as I entreated and begged and 
expostulated, the smoke would come thicker and faster. Sometimes he 
would make a cloud of smoke so thick that I could not see liim. I guess 
he smoked a thousand cigars while he was settling the point. He declared 
by all that was sacred he would resist the tempter. I appealed to his 
patriotism. I said he was a young man, and should take it for that reason. 
A long judicial life was the only useful one to the State. His decisions 
would give stability to the government, and I made him believe it was 
his duty, as 1 think it was under the circumstances.” 

— From F. H. Chase s ^Life of Shawf 136. 

And Webster always claimed great credit as being the cause of his 
taking it. — Author. 



SIR VICARY GIBBS, England 

AGE AND IMPOTENCY 

“Age may not be proof of impotency, but it is evidence of it. The 
probability of the Earl’s begetting a cMd at eighty is very slight, and 
it is not increased by the appearance of another child two years later. 
Instances have been adduced of these extraordinary births; but none 
have been cited in which a man of eighty-two, having begotten a son, 
had concealed the birth of such son. Would he not seek publication 
rather than concealment? Besides, at the birth of children in families 
of distinction, it is generally an object of much anxiety to have the event 
authenticated. Some registry is made of it. None has been found here 
after the most diligent search. If the register is lost, the date may always 
be supplied by the banquets and festivities which with it is contempo¬ 
raneous. Why, the whole country would have resounded with the 
ringing of bells! You would have had processions of old men upon the 
anniversary of such a prodigy. It would have excited as much surprise 
as if a mule had been brought to bed! * * * In no register, in no 

will, in no document, is there any notice of this wonderful production. 
And then, not content with one, the miracle must be multiplied. It 
was not enough that one child should be born to a man at eighty-two: 
he must have another when he was eighty-four. And Nature consum¬ 
mated her prodigality by lavishing on these children the strength and 
vigor which she usually denies to the offspring of imbecility.” 

—Argument in the Banhury Peerage, Case reported in an Appendix 
to Le Marchanf s Gardner's Peerage, .^28. 


RELIGION AND POLITICS 

“You commit a grievous error in supposing that polities and religion 
are so mingled together that you cannot preach one without introducing 
the other. Christ and his apostles kept them perfectly separate. They 
announced the great facts of the gospel to each individual whom they 
addressed. When these were accepted, the believer was told to repent 
and be baptized for the remission of his sins, and afterward to regulate 
his own life by the rules of a pure and perfect morality. They expressed 
no preference for one form of government over another. They provoked 
no political revolutions, and they proposed no legal reforms. If they had 
done so, they would have flatly contradicted the declaration that Christ’s 
kingdom was not of this world, and Christianity itself would have died 
out in half a century. But they accepted the relations which were created 
by human law, and exhorted their disciples to discharge faithfully which 
arose out of them. Though the laws which defined the authority of hus¬ 
bands, parents, masters and magistrates were as bad as human perversity 
could make them, yet the early Christians contented themselves with 
teaching moderation in the exercise of legal power, and uniformly inculcat¬ 
ed the virtues of obedience and fidelity upon wives, children, slaves and 
subjects. They joined in no clamors for or against sin before the only 
tribunal which Christ ever erected on earth—that is to say, the conscience 
of the sinner himself. The vice of political preaching was wholly unknown 
to the primitive church.” 

—Jeremiah S. Black, in Reply to Dr. Nevin, York, Pa., July 25, 1866. 



JUDGE JOHN B. GIBSON (1780-1853), Pennsylvania 


EMINENT DOMAIN 

“It is indispensable to safety and speed that the route of the rail¬ 
road be as direct as the surface of the country will permit, but that 
could not be attained in a country if every hovel or house were privileged; 
and thus a quasi national work intended for posterity might be botched 
through respect for the sacredness of temporary erections. The course 
of a railroad might be insuperably obstructed by the obstinacy of a pro¬ 
prietor in the gorge of a mountain, or the pass be made, at least, difficult and 
dangerous. A mangled passenger inquiring the reason of a deflection, 
when the cause of it had disappeared might be told of our infinite re¬ 
spect for property at the expense of safety; but the information would 
neither ease his pain, nor set his leg.” 

—Brocket v. Ohio R. R. Co., H Pa. State, Judge John B. 

Gibson. 

INSANITY 

“Insanity is mental or moral; the latter being sometimes called homicidal 
mania, and properly so. * * * It has been announced by learned 

doctors, that if a man has the least taint of insanity entering into his 
mental structure, it discharges him of all responsibility to the laws. 
To tins monstrous error may be traced both the fecundity in homicides, 
which has dishonored this country, and the immunity that has attended 
them. The law is, that whether the insanity be general or partial, the 
degree of it must be so great as to have controlled the will of the subject, 
and to have taken from him the freedom of moral action. But there 
is a moral or homicidal insanity, consisting of an irresistible inclination 
to kill, or to commit some other particular offense. There may be an 
unseen ligament pressing on the mind, drawing it to consequences which 
it sees, but cannot avoid, and placing it under a coercion, which, wffiile 
its results are clearly perceived, is incapable of resistance. The doctrine 
which acknowledges this mania is dangerous in its relations, and can 
be recognized only in the clearest cases. It ought to be shown to have 
been habitual, or at least to have evinced itself in more than a single 
instance. It is seldom directed against a particular individual; but that 
it may be so is proved by the case of the young woman who was deluded 
by an irresistible impulse to destroy her child. The frequency of this 
constitutional malady is fortunately small, and it is better to confine 
it within the strictest limits. If juries were to allow it as a general motive, 
operating in cases of this character, its recognition would destroy social 
order as well as personal Safety. To establish it as a justification in any 
particular case, it is necessary to show, by clear proofs, its contempo¬ 
raneous existence evinced by present circumstances, or the existence of 
an habitual tendency developed in previous cases, becoming in itself a 
second nature.”— In Commonwealth v. Hosier, Pa., Rep. 26^. 

THE FUNCTIONS OF A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 

“In a monarchy, the exemption of the soverign from the operation 
of statutes in which he his not named, is founded in prerogative and 
hence it is supposed, that no such exemption can be claimed for a sover¬ 
eign constituted of the people in their collective capacity. It is certain, 
that so much of the prerogative as appertained to the king by virtue of his 
dignity, is excluded by the nature of our government, which possesses none 


298 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


of the attributes of royalty; but so much of it as belonged to 
him in the capacity of parens patriae, or universal trustee, enters 
as such into our political compact as it does into the principles 
of the British constitution. Why should it not do so peculiarly where 
the maximum salus populi is the predominant principle of a government 
to whose operations and well-being the prerogative is as essential as 
to those of a monarchy? The necessity of it, in regard -to statutes of 
limitation, is peculiarly apparent. The business of every government is 
necessarily done by agents, chosen in a republic, by the people, it is true, 
but still no more than agents, and chosen certainly with no greater 
attention to the qualification of vigilance than are the agents of an 
individual. * * * There is a perpetual tendency towards relaxation, 

where exertion is not invigorated by the stimulus of private gain; and this 
is the greater where the functions of the officer are to be performed, 
not under the supervision of an employer immediately concerned, but 
before the eyes of those who have no other interest in the business than 
the remote stake which they have in the public prosperity. To some 
extent, therefore, and in proportion to the want there happens to be 
of systematic accountability in the respective departments, remissness 
of its ministers will be found in every government; and'it is a principle, 
not only of great practical value, but of the first necessity, that the legis¬ 
lature shall not be taken to have postponed a public right to that of an 
individual, unless such an intent be manifested by explicit terms, or at 
least by necessary and irresistible implication.”— In Commonwealth v. 
Baldwin, 1 WatVs Rep. dlf.. 

TAKES 13 FOR VERDICT 

“Gentlemen of the Jury, this verdict will be set aside for it takes twelve 
men and one more to rob a man of his land in Pennsylvania.” 

A NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENT 

“A negotiable bill or note is a courier without luggage.” 

—In Overton v. Tayler, 3 Barr, 31^6. 

PRECEDENTS 

“Precedents are the highest evidence of the law, and are to be followed 
implicitly where they do not produce actual injustice or some intolerable 
mischief.”— Sanerman v. Wecherly, 17 Ser. and Rawle's Rep., 116. 

PRESUMPTIONS 

“Not only convenience but necessity calls for a definite rule to produce 
certainty of result in the determination of facts which must be passed 
upon without proof ; and such can be obtained only from the doctrine 
of presumption, which, however arbitrary, is indispensable, and, when 
founded in the ordinary course of events, productive of results which 
usually accord with the truth.”— John B. Gibson, in Burr v. Sim., 
Wharton's Rep., 150. 


SAMUEL T. GLOVER (1813-1884). Missouri 


WAR vs. SLAVERY 

“If war comes he shakes as with a giant’s tread the pillars and founda¬ 
tions of the State. He buffets rudely our social and civil relations and 
rights; he passes by our homes and they are filled with mourning; he 
passes over our fields and they are blasted and blackened by his fiery 
bolts. At length, victory conquers or exhaustion mitigates his miseries. 
At length the frightful spectre departs and beautiful and gentle peace 
resumes her sway. The mayflower expands her fair coronal above the 
bleak skeleton; and from fields ensanguined with heroic blood the rank 
harvest springs forth to bless the land with plenty.” 

Born in Kentucky, and practiced there three years; moved to St. 
Louis in ’49, where he practiced till death. 

Says James I. Blair of the St. Louis bar; “For sheer power of intellect 
he stood among the first order of men; his powers resulted from a combi¬ 
nation of genius with labor; he was equal to any emergency; and whatever 
he did would be adapted best to the necessities of the time and place.” 

LEGALIZED GRAVE DESPOILERS 

“The Missouri Convention have outraged the sense of universal 
humanity. In the insult which they have offered to the dead and the 
desecration of graves and tombs they have stricken a blow at every 
living human bosom. They have ordered the assessment and sale for 
taxes of the graves of their people. They are the first legislative hyenas 
on record. Hitherto, whoever despoiled a grave or tomb was a public 
criminal, subject to arrest and disgraceful punishment. A Convention 
legalized this odious crime. The new Constitution directs its offers 
substantially to remove the enclosures around these solemn spots, tear 
down the monuments and divert the grounds from a sacred to a common 
use.” 


GENERAL FRANKLIN PIERCE 

“The Baltimore Convention may make Gen. Pierce our President, 
but Heaven has put it out of their power to make him great.” 


JOHN C. CALHOUN 

“Calhoun has left better titles to remembrance than any which mere 
office can bestow. There was an unsullied purity in his private life; 
there was an inflexible integrity in his public conduct, there was in inde¬ 
scribable fascination in his familiar conversation; there was a condensed 
energy in his formal discourse; there was a quickness of perception, a 
vigor of deduction, a directness and a devotedness of purpose, in all that 
he said or wrote, or did; there was a Roman dignity in his whole Senatorial 
deportment; which together, made up a character, which cannot fail to 
be contemplated and admired to the latest posterity.” 

—Robert Charles Winthrop on the death of John C. Calhoun, delivered 
in House of Representatives, Washington, D. C., April 1, 1850. 



THOS. P. GORE (1870- ), Oklahoma 

WILSON-HARVEY CONTROVERSY 

“This whole Wilson-Harvey-Watterson incident is a bubble, not a 
billow. It is not surprising, however, that the opponents of Wilson and 
the friends of the other candidates should mistake the one for the other. 

It seems that the head and heart of the governor’s (Wilson’s) offending is 
that he has told the truth. 

“No honest man can accept an office, least and last of all the presidency, 
with a lien upon his conscience or his conduct. Continuous support 
implies and imposes some obligation upon him who consents to accept 
it or who acquiesces in its continuance. 

“No one has plenary power to select either his friends or his opponents 
in politics. To decline tendered aid and alliance is a most difficult and 
delicate task. Few men have the courage and the candor to do this 
when battle is joined. But in the light of higher ethics and politics it 
is better to decline support in advance, no matter what the sacrifice, 
than to renounce the obligation after the service is rendered, and the 
benefit enjoyed. To do that in the face of danger is an act of moral and 
political heroism of which few men are capable. Peradventure, the 
govenor may have learned, by experience, that there are men who would 
undertake to capitalize gratitude and to commerciahze influence. He 
may have thought it just and timely to foreclose the possibility of such 
an attempt hereafter. 

“The critics of Governor Wilson should tell the public frankly whether 
their candidates would assume such an obligation as the governor declined, 
and if so, whether their candidates would disregard or would discharge 
such obligation. The American people have a right to know the text 
and terms of all mortgages and deeds of trust, either expressed or implied, 
under which a candidate for the presidency may labor, and they have an ' 
equal right to know the names of all the mortgagees and beneficiaries of 
the trust. I would rather see Govenor Wilson defeated with his heart 
an open book ‘that all who run may read’ than to see him triumphant with 
a skeleton in his political closet which has been concealed from the eyes 
of the confiding public.” 

— Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, concerning Woodrow Wilson's 
letter refusing the support of Henry JVatterson and George Harvey, 
in 1912. 


ZACHARY TAYLOR 

“I hazard nothing, sir, in saying that the roll of our Chief Magistrates, 
since 1789, illustrious as it is, presents the name of no man who has 
enjoyed a higher reputation with his contemporaries or who will enjoy 
a higher reputation with posterity than Zachary Taylor, for some of the 
best and noblest qualities which adorn our nature. His indomitable 
courage, his unimpeachable honesty, his Spartan simplicity and sagacity, 
his frankness, kindness, moderation and magnanimity, his fidelity to 
his friends, his generosity and humanity to his enemies, the purity of 
his private life, the patriotism of his public principles, vill never cease 
to be cherished in the grateful remembrance of all just men and all true 
hearted Americans. As a Soldier and a General, Ms fame is associated 
with some of the proudest and most thrilling scenes of our military 
history. He may be literally said to have conquered every enemy he has 
met, save only that last enemy to which we must all in turn surrender.” 
— Robt. G. Winthrop on the Death of Prest. Taylor, in H. of R., 
July to, 1850. 



HENRY WOODHULL GREEN (1804-1876), New Jersey 


A WILL—NOT DEPENDENT UPON THE VIRTUES OR VICES 

OF TESTATOR 

“I need not say to an intelligent and reflecting jury, that the validity 
of this will can in no wise depend upon the virtues or vices of the testator. 
If this will be invalid, no virtue of the testator can sustain it, if valid, 
no vices of the testator can impair it. Much less can the validity of 
this will depend upon the consistency of its provisions with our 
ideas of fairness or propriety or even with the principles of justice 
and humanity; such a test of its validity would be certainly subversive 
of that absolute dominion which the law gives to every man over his own 
property. The question for your decision is not, is this a fair will, a just 
will, an equitable will, the will of a right thinking man and a kind hearted 
father, but is it Thomas Gibbons’ will? If it is, your verdict should be 
for the defendant. Nor need I say to you, that this is not the place 
nor the occasion for the indulgence of our sympathy with misfortune, 
or our indignation against vice, much less are you here to rebuke sin. 
We are here in the discharge of a high and a sacred duty, which is to be 
performed with a single eye to the law and the testimony, irrespective 
of our feelings and our sympathies.” 

—In charge to jury in Trumbull v. Gibbons, 2 Zabriskie, 117. 

Thomas Gibbons’ will gave substantially all his property to his son, 
William, on condition, expressed in the strongest terms, that no part of 
it should ever go directly or indirectly to his son-in-law, John M. Trum¬ 
bull, or any of his descendants to the remotest generation. It was insisted 
that the will was immoral and void for injustice and that it was the result 
of undue influence and the work of a perverted and insane mind. The 
case was tried in the Essex Circuit at the April term, 1849. 

Judge Green was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
New Jersey, in January, 1847, which he held for 14 years; in 1860, he 
was appointed Chancellor, and held that position for 6 years. 

Cortlandt Parker said of him, in 1874: “Those who did not know 
Henry W. Green as a Circuit Judge missed seeing an eminent illustration 
of judicial majesty. His great ability was certainly never excelled in 
N. J., and even less conspicuous than his stern, yet gracious manner in 
exercising his high office. He sat patient, untiring, admitting evidence 
with great liberality, and hearing and adjudicating all points with rare 
impartiality through the course of the trial. But when he came to charge 
the jury, he was so sweeping in supporting the side he thought right 
that counsel on both sides were half ashamed; the successful advocate,, 
because his own effort appeared by comparison, so worthless, the un¬ 
successful one, because his seemed weak and needless. His was that 
rare achievement, a great Judge.” 

A MANDAMUS 

“The distinction is clearly drawn between the President himself, and 
the head of a department acting in a matter, which, in the opinion of 
the court, has passed beyond the control of the President, which he had 
no right to forbid, and which, therefore, it was to be presumed he had not 
forbidden. The case affords no warrant for the present application. 
And again, ‘It is obvious that the exercise of the power now invoked 
will have a direct and immediate tendency to bring the executive and 
judicial departments of the government into conflict. It cannot alter 
the principle, that in the present case the Governor assents to the applica- 


302 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


tion. We have Mr. Jefferson’s authority for saying, that if the Supreme 
Court had granted a mandamus in the case of Marbury v. Madison, he 
should have regarded it as trenching on his appropriate sphere of duty; 
that he had instructed Mr. Madison not to deliver the comrnission and 
that he was prepared, as President of the U. S., to maintain his own 
construction of the constitution with all the powers of the government, 
against any control that might be attempted by the judiciary, in effecting 
■v^at he regarded as the rightful powers of the exec^utive and senate 
within their peculiar departments.” 

— The State v. The Governor, 1 Butcher^ Reports, 331. 

The question was whether a mandamus could be issued to the Governor 
to compel him to issue a commission to the applicant as surrogate, 
contrary to the return of the board of county canvassers, when it appeared 
that the return had been made upon illegal evidence and was untrue. 
The Chief Justice held that the statute required the Governor to issue 
a commission upon the return of the board of canvassers and that the- 
court could not instruct him to disregard the plain requirements of the 
statute that the mandamus must be denied “upon the broad ground that 
this court has not power to award a mandamus either to compel the 
execution of any duty enjoined on the Executive by the constitution, or 
to direct the manner of its performance.” 


THE FLAG—THE OLD FLAG 

“Mr. President and Gentlemen:—The enthusiastic response which 
the sentiment just read (John A. Dix’s order—Tf any man attempts 
to haul down the flag, shoot him on the spot.’) has received, is but the 
emination of a principle in our nature as old as human society. In every 
age through which mankind has passed, organized communities have 
had appropriate emblems for the assertion of their authority at home 
and their rights abroad. From the eagles, under which the Roman 
Empire was extended over the known portions of the globe, the Crescents 
of the Saracenic race and the banners and oriflammes of the Middle Ages, 
down to the national flags and standards of our own times, a peculiar 
veneration has consecrated these symbols of sovereignty. Victories, 
social progress, the march of the nations to prosperity and power, have 
become identified with them. Insult to them from abroad has been resent¬ 
ed by war. Treachery to them at home has been visited with the penalties 
of treason. They have been hallowed by lofty and ennobling associa¬ 
tions; but none of them by higher or more endearing recollections than 
the flag which hangs over us today—the same flag under which our fathers 
battled for freedom and independence. It was adopted by the old 
Congress while the new-born Republic was struggling into life. Our 
armies first went forth to combat under it when Washington was their 
commander-in-chief. In the hour of victory we have given it to the winds 
as the expression of our thankfulness and joy. In the days of our calamity 
we have turned to it for support, as the people of God turned in the dark¬ 
ness of the night to the Pillar of Fire, which was conducting them through 
the perils of the wilderness. Holy associations like these should have 
made it sacred. But it has been more than once torn down and trampled 
under foot by traitors. When men have made up their minds to treason, 
the highest of all crimes, there is no baseness so low that they will not 
descend to it. 

—John A Dix, at 58th Annual Dinner of the New England Society, 

N. Y. City, Dec. 22, 1863. 



GALUSHA A. GROW (1822-1901), Pennsylvania 


MAN’S RIGHT TO THE SOIL 

“The fundamental rights of man may be summed up in two words— 
Life and Happiness. The first is the gift of the Creator, and may be 
bestowed at his pleasure; but it is not consistent Avith his character for 
benevolence, that it should be bestowed for any other purpose than to 
be enjoyed, and that we call happiness. Therefore, whatever nature 
has provided for preserving the one or promoting the other belongs 
alike to the whole race. And as the means for sustaining life are derived 
almost entirely from the soil, every person has a right to so much of the 
earth’s surface as is necessary for his support. To whatever unoccupied 
portion of it, therefore, he shall apply his labor for that purpose, from 
that time forth it becomes appropriated to his own exclusive use; and 
Avhatever improvements he may make by his industry become his prop¬ 
erty, and subject to his disposal. 

“The only true foundation of any right to property is man’s labor. 
That is property, and that alone which labor of man has made such. 
What right, then, can the Government have in the soil of a wild and 
uncultivated wilderness as a source of revenue, to which not a day nor 
an hour’s labor has been applied, to make it more productive, and ansAver 
the end for which it was created, the support and happiness of the race? 

“It is said of the great expounder of the common law in his commen¬ 
taries, that ‘there is no foundation in nature or natural law, why a set 
of words upon parchment should convey the domination of the land.’ 
The use and occupancy alone gives to man, in the language of the com¬ 
mentaries, ‘an exclusive right to retain, in a permanent manner, that 
specific land which before belonged generally to everybody, but particu¬ 
larly to nobody.’ * * * 

“It m£y be said, trul5^ such ‘would be man’s right to the soil in a state 
of nature; but when he entered into society, he gave up part of his natural 
rights, in order to enjoy the advantages of an organized community. 
This is a doctrine, I am aware, of the books and treatises on society 
and government; but it is a doctrine of despotism, and belongs not to 
enlightened statesmen in a liberal age. It is the excuse of the despot 
in encroaching upon the rights of the subject. He admits the encroach¬ 
ment, but claims that the citizen gave up part of his natural rights 
Avhen he entered into society; and who is to judge what ones he relin¬ 
quished but the ruling power? It was not necessary that any of man’s 
natural rights should be yielded to the State in the formation of society. 
He yielded no right, but the right to do Avrong, and that he never had 
by nature. All that he yielded in entering into organized society was 
a portion of his unrestrained liberty, which was, that he would submit 
his conduct to the control of no living being, to the tribunals to be estab¬ 
lished by the State, and Avith a tacit consent that society, or the Govern¬ 
ment, might regulate the mode and manner of the exercise of his rights. 
Why should he consent to be deprived of them ? It is upon this ground 
that we justify resistance to tyrants. Whenever the ruling power so 
far encroaches upon the natural rights of men that an appeal to arms 
becomes preferable to submission, they appeal from human to diAune 
laws, and plead the natural rights of man in their justification. That 
government, and that alone, is just which enforces and defends all of 
man’s natural rights and protects him against wrongs of his fellow 
men. But it may be said, although such might be the natural rights of 
men, yet the Government has a right to these lands, and may use them 


304 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


as a source of revenue, under the doctrine of eminent domain.” 

— The above speech was made in the House of Representatives, 
1852. 

Admitted to Bar, 1847; member of Congress, ‘51-‘63, first as Free 
Soil Democrat and latterly as a Republican, being Speaker of the House 
after ’61. As Brest, of the International and Great Northern R. R., he 
lived in Texas for some time, but returned to Pa. in ’76. 


OUR PREJUDICES 

“We easily believe what we wish to be true. We are prone to be 
satisfied with light proof, or any fallacy, or feeling. W^^®^ suffer 
ourselves to be thus tempted, we act as tyrants, not as judges. In the 
midst of our virtuous indignation against crime, we first assume it has 
been committed, and then seek for arguments to confirm not our judg¬ 
ments, but our prejudice. ‘Trifles light as air’ then become ‘strong as 
proofs of holy Avrit!” Circumstances which to an unprejudiced mind 
are just as compatable with innocence as guilt, which at best could 
only raise a suspicion, are set down as conclusive evidence of crime. Those 
who sit in judgment over man’s rights, whether as courts’ or juries should 
beware of this natural weakness to which we are almost all of us subject.” 

—Judge Robt. C. Grier, from Charge to Jury, of Pa. 

Born 1794; was associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, 26 years 
(1844-1870). Occupies a front rank among American Jurists. In Turner 
V. Hand, 3 Wallace, Jr. 112.— The Author. 


i NOT GUILTY OF LARCENY 

I “Prisoner, a few minutes ago you said you were a thief. Now the 
1 jurj' say you are a liar. Consequently you are discharged.” 

— J7idge Henry Hawkins, {Baron Brampton) of England, to a prisoner, 
who had pleaded ^guilty' to larceny, and then withdrew his plea, and 
was tried and found ‘ not guilty.' 


CENSURE AND CRITICISM 

“Censure and Criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can’t 
hurt you unless you are wanting in manly character; and if true they show 
a man his weak points and forewarn him against failure and trouble.” 
— W. E. Gladstone. 


HOME 

“Home is a little place, and there a good woman can make a Heaven, 
rear a throne, and rule a goddess.”— W. E. Gladstone. 






JOHN R. GRYMES (1786-1854), Louisiana 


CHARACTERISTICS 

“Grymes was a Virginian and a close connection of John Randolph, 
of Roanoke, whose name he bore; but of this he never boasted, nor 
did anyone hear him claim alliance of blood with Pocahontas. Mr. 
Madison appointed him District Attorney of the U. S., for the district 
of Louisiana, when a very young man. His appointment introduced him 
to the Bar and the practice immediately. He was one of those extraordi¬ 
nary creations, who leap into manhood without the probation of youth; 
at twenty-two he was eminent and in full practice, ranking with the lead¬ 
ing members of the bar. Truly Grymes was born great, for no one can 
remember when he was not great. Never in company, in social life, with 
a private friend, at the bar, or anywhere, was he even apparently simple 
like other men; in private, with his best friend, he spoke, he looked, 
and he was, the great man. He was great in his frivolties, great in his 
burlesques; great in his humor, great in common conversation; the great 
lawyer, the great orator, the great spendthrift; in nothing was he little. 
His language was ornate, his style was terse and beautiful; in conversation 
he was voluable and transcendentally entertaining; knew everybody 
and everything; never seemed to read, and yet was always prepared in 
his cases, and seemed to be a lawyer by intuition. He was rarely in 
his office, but always on the street, and always dressed in the extreme of 
fashion; lived nowhere, boarded nowhere, slept nowhere, and ate every¬ 
where. He dined at a restaurant, and scarcely ever at the same place 
twice in succession; would search for hours to find a genial friend to dine 
with him, and then, if he was in the mood, there was a feast of the body, 
and a flow of the soul; went to every ball, danced with everybody, visited 
the ladies; was learned or frivolous, as suited the ladies’ capacities or 
attainments; appeared fond of their society, and always spoke of them with 
ridicule or contempt; married and separated from his wife, no one knew 
for what cause, yet still claimed and supported her. She was the widow 
of Governor Claiborne, and a magnificent woman; she was a Spaniard 
by blood, aristocratic in her feelings, eccentric, and, intellectually, a 
fit companion for Grymes. She was to Claiborne an admirable wife 
but there was little congeniality between her and Grymes. Grymes 
knew that it was not possible for any woman to tolerate him as a husband, 
and was contented to live apart from his wife. They were never divorced, 
but lived, she in New York, or at her villa on Staten Island; Grymes in 
New Orleans. He never complained of her; always spoke kindly, and 
sometimes affectionately of her; denied the separation, and annually 
visited her. Their relations were 'perfectly amicable, but they could not 
live together. Grymes could have lived with no woman. In all things 
he was sui generis: with no one like him in any one thing, and he was 
never the same being two consecutive days.” 

— ir. //. Spark’s ^Memoirs of Fifty. Years,’ JiS2. 

ALWAYS IN DEBT 

“During the existence of the law which imprisoned for debt, Grymes 
was constantly in the sheriff’s hands, but always settling by the 
ingenius devices the claim at the jail-door. On one occasion, the sheriff 
notified him that there was a ca. sa. in his hands, and that he did not want 
to arrest him. The sum was large, some $2,000; Grymes had not a dollar. 
He paused a moment, then said, ‘Come to-morrow to me. I have a case 
of Milliadon’s for trial tomorrow; he is greatly interested m it._ When 
it is called, I will give you the wink, then arrest me.’ In obedience to 


306 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


directions, the sheriff came, the ease was called, and Grymes arrested, 
Milliadon was in court, his hopes were in Grymes, and when he was 
informed that Grymes was in custody of the sheriff, he groaned aloud: 

“ ‘Oh! Mr. Grymes, vat am I to do?’ 

“ ‘Why, you must employ other counsel,’ said Grymes 

“ ‘Mon dieul but I have pay you for attend this case, and I want you. 
You know about it, and it must be try now.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ continued the imperturbable Grymes, ‘you have paid me, I know, 
and it would endanger the case to trust it mth other counsel, but it is 
your only hope. I have no money, and here is a ca. sa., and I am on my 
way to jail.’ 

“ ‘Oh! mon dieu! mon dieu! vat is de amount of de ca. sa.l 

“ ‘Two thousand dollars,’ said the sheriff. 

“ ‘Two thousand dollars!’ repeated Milliadon. 

“ ‘Goddell V. Milliadon,’ said the Judge, ‘Preston for plaintiff: Grymes, 
for defendant, what do you do with the case, gentlemen?’ 

“ ‘We are ready,’ said Preston. 

“ ‘And you, Mr. Grymes?’ asked the officer. 

“ ‘Vill you take my check for de ca. sa., Mr. Sheriff?’ 

“ ‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the officer. 

“ ‘Say we is ready, too, Mr. Grymes, all my witnesses be here.’ 

“ ‘I believe we are ready, your Honor,’ answered Grymes. 

“Milliadon was writing his check. ‘Enter satisfaction on the ca. sa .!’ 
said Grymes. The sheriff did so, as Milliadon handed him the check. 
Grymes now turned his attention to the ease as coolly as though nothing 
had occurred. That was the last Milliadon ever heard of his $2,000.” 

— W. H. Spark's ^Memoirs of Fifty Years,' Jf3Jf-5. 

REGRETTED EARLY IMPROVIDENCE 

“During Grymes old age, he said to Mr. Sparks: ‘Now, my friend I 
feel how miserably foolish I have been all my life. I have thrown away 
a fortune because I despised it. It was the groveling a pursuit, too mean 
a vocation, to make and to hoard money. In my soul I despised it, and 
now you see it is revenged; for without it, I have learned there is no 
gratification for ambition, no independence of a sneering, envious world. 
A bankrupt is a felon, though his mind, his virtues, and his attainments 
may be those of a god. He is a useless waif upon the world, for all he has, 
or all he may be, is, to himself and the world, unavailable without money. 

I have discarded all my ambitious aspirations long since, and tried to 
reconcile myself to the fact that my life was within my reach, when I 
have no means to grasp it (Sparks was with him to tell him that he could 
be elected United States Senator), and now that I am miserable, to show 
me what I might have been. No, my friend, I must go on with the drudg¬ 
ery of the law, to earn my bread, and thus eke out a miserable future. 

I am gratified to you and my friends, who have delegated you to this 
mission. Say so to them, if you please. I must go to Court. The horse 
of the bark-mill must go to his daily circle. Good morning.’ ” 

— Spark's Memoirs, etc., JJ7. 

$100,000 FEE 

Grymes, as the attorney for the City of New Orleans, succeeded before 
the Supreme Court of the United States in making good the batture 
property in the city. What is termed the batture in Louisiana is the land 
made by accretion, or deposits of the Mississippi. One strange feature 
of this great river is that it never gets any wider. It is continually 
wearing and carving on one side or the other, and making a corresponding 
deposit on the other bank. Opposite, a portion of the City of New Orleans 
this deposit has been going on for many years, while the opposite bank 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


307 


has been wearing away. There are living citizens, who saw in youth, 
the river occupying what is now covered by many streets and by many 
blocks of buildings, and is one of the most valuable portions of the city. 
In truth, was a century ago, entire river, is now one-fourth of the city, 
and this deposit goes on annually without any decrease in its ratio. 
By agreement of all parties, the batture was surveyed into squares and 
lots, and sold at public auction, and the money deposited in the Bank 
of Louisiana, to the credit of the Supreme Comt of the United States, 
to abide the decision of that tribunal as to the rightful ownership. The 
decision gave it to the city. Grymes, as attorney for the city, by order 
of the Court, received a check for the money. The Bank paid the check, 
and Grymes appropriated $100,000 of it as a fee for his services, and 
then deposited the balance to the credit of the Mayor and Council of 
the City. This was a large fee, but was not really what he was entitled 
to, under the custom of chancery, for collecting money. He had agreed 
to pay Daniel Webster, for assistance received; but Mr. Webster, some 
years after, informed me that he had never received a cent, and I am sure 
that he never did, after that.”— Spark’s 'Memoirs of Fifty Years,’ 4.38-9. 

SOMETHING OF HIS CAREER 

Grymes was born in Orange Co., Va., in 1786, son of John Randolph 
Grymes (1746-1820). He was admitted in 1808, removed to Louisiana, 
where he attained eminence as a lawyer; served in the battle of New 
Orleans as aid to Gen. Jackson, where he won great commendation for 
bravery. He was Gen. Jackson’s counsel in the U. S. Bank Case, and was 
the opposing counsel to Daniel Webster in the case of the City of New 
Orleans v. Myra Clark Gaines; was U. S. Dist. Atty, Atty-General of the 
State, and a member of the legislature; fought two duels, in one of which 
he was severly wounded; died at New Orleans, Dec. 4, 1854. He was 
engaged in almost every case of importance in the courts of New Orleans 
and the surrounding country. 


YELVERTON’S DEFENCE OF GRATTAN 

“The learned gentleman (Fitzgibbon, or Lord Clare) has stated what 
Grattan is. I will state wbat he is not. He is not styed in his prejudices; 
he does not trample on the resuscitation of his country, or Uve, hke a 
caterpillar, on the decline of her prosperity; he does not stickle for the 
letter of the Constitution with the affection of a prude and abandon its 
principles with the effrontery of a prostitute.” 



W. P. HACKNEY (1842- ), Kansas 


FAME 

It was at a church banquet, where nearly 500 of what was otherwise 
an audience of far more than ordinary intelligence, comprising the cream, 
as it were, of one of the nearby suburbs of one of our great cities (Clev’d, 
O.), to which I was invited, under a solemn promise that if I would attend 
I would not be called upon to speak. I insisted that I was not a happy 
after-dinner talker, when I was unexpectedly called upon by the toast¬ 
master, after admitting his breach of faith to respond to the toast, 
“FAME.” 

It is needless to say I was dumbfounded; taken completely by surprise, 
upon a subject that had never engaged my attention for discussion. 
The audience, with few exceptions, was one of unfamiliar faces to me, 
and at first I flatly refused to speak; but such was the persistent demands 
of all, coupled with the insistence of my wife, that I reluctantly consented, 
altho what I should say, was only a matter of conjecture with myself. 
But something seemingly I must say, and rising I said: 

“Mr. Toast-master, Ladies and Gentlemen: Only on the most solemn 
promise of your Toast-master that I would not be called upon was I 
induced to accept his and your pastor’s invitation to be with you tonight. 
I think I know my limitations, and after-dinner speeches are not my 
forte, and I feel my incompetency to handle the subject given me, 1st: 
Because of want of preparation; 2nd: Because the discussion of that 
question never has been considered by me; and 3rd: Because I am neither an 
orator, nor the son of one, and this call has taken me entirely by surprise. 
And yet, it may be that I can say something to illuminate the subject, 
something that you can take home for consideration. 

“To my mind. Fame is an iridescent dream; a chimera of the brain, 
indulged by man in a mad scramble for the plaudits of the ‘pee-puL’ 
A political fantasia that causes the individual to waste his life, where there 
are no compensations awaiting for the worry and toil necessary to follow 
it. Something, when seemingly within one’s grasp, ignis fatuus like is 
gone, and the victim having run his course, drops into decrepitude, a 
disgusted, dissatisfied and disappointed old man, the grave swallows 
him up, and he is forgotten in an hour. 

“There is no subject that has taken fast hold upon, held such sway, 
and inspired so many crimes as that word has conjured in the minds of 
men. That was the power that influenced the wife of Macbeth, and made 
of her the bloody monster, whose sneers drove her cowardly husband 
to murder Duncan. That was the influence that assassinated Caesar, 
divided the Triumvirate, covered the planes of Pharsalia with soldiers 
dead, and enabled Augustus to assume the imperial purple. And so 
on, I might go on with like illustrations of the emptiness of that word 
FAME. How many of this vast aggregation can tell me who Lyman 
Trumbull was? Please hold up your hands. (Just two responded.) Each 
when catechised by me, disclosed that he had in mind, Jonathan Trum¬ 
bull, of Connecticut, of Revolutionary fame, when I proceeded: 

“No! No! friends, you are both mistaken. Lyman Trumbull was a 
distinguished lav^er, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of IlHnois, 
in 1854: a free soil Democrat, and then elected to the Senate of the U. S., 
from the State by a combination of that wing of the Democratic Party, 
made possible only by the withdrawal in his favor by Abraham Lincoln, 
the Whig candidate in that Legislature. From thence he served the 
people 18 years. He was chairman of the Judiciary Committee of that 
body; of the Committee for the Investigation of the Conduct of the Civil 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


309 


War; of Reconstruction, and twice a candidate for the Presidency. 
For 18 years, and particularly the last 12, his name filled the daily press, 
and his fame was not confined to this continent. One of the purest and 
grandest men this or any other Nation ever produced. He voted against 
the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, and thereby was driven 
into private life, where lingering, forgotten, unheralded and unsung, 
he passed away less than two months ago, at the advanced age of ninety- 
three. 

“What a commentary on ambition and the love of FAME is his life! 
Dead less than two months! Yet, an intelligent audience, composed of 
hundreds in a neighboring city from where he died, can produce not one 
who can recall that such a man ever lived. And such is Fame. 

“Tn conclusion: 

“ ‘Mark Ambition’s rise sublime 
Up to Fame’s meridian heights. 

While pale-eyed Envy sees him climb. 

And sickens at the sight.’ 

“ ‘The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave 
Await alike the inevitable hour, 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’ ” 


IN DEFENSE OF THE BIBLE 

“In defense of the Bible, Hosmer tells us that ‘In several respects 
the Mosaic law is declared to have anticipated modern science by several 
thousand years,’ and I here and now challenge the attention of my 
hearers and all others versed in Biblical lore to the literary excellencies; 
the incisive logic; the scientific knowledge; the trenchent philosophy; 
and the beauty, the poetry, the wisdom, and the eloquence found therein. 
Where can the learning displayed in the five books of Moses be duplicated; 
the pathos of the lamentations of Jeremiah be equaled; the poetry of 
Job surpassed; the wisdom of Solomon excelled; the Psalms of David 
paralleled; the teachings of Christ comparable; or the oratory and elo¬ 
quence of Paul equaled ? In all of which is found, all of the history, the 
learning, the literature, the science, the philosophy, and the eloquence 
now known to man, anticipated. Before all of which—astonishing, 
surprising, amazing, wonderful, marvelous, overwhelming and astound¬ 
ing—all other thinkers and writers are comparable only as a tallow dip 
candle is to the glories of a noon-day sunshine. Aye! Before which all 
other history, all other logic, all other wisdom, all other science, and all 
other philosophy is’incomparable, and these facts ought to be sufficient 
alone to convince the minds of all that such utterances were not possible 
without ‘an inspiration from on high.’ ” 

—From a Lecture delivered at Wichita, Kans., March 23, 1913, 
on “ The Personality of the Almighty Father and the Divinity of 
His Son, Christ Jesus.” 

Mr. Hackney, who is a very eloquent and influential lawyer in Southern 
Kansas, was born in Iowa, Dee. 24, 1842, and practiced 6 years at the 
Cleveland, O., Bar. Is now a resident of Winfield, Kans. 


HERBERT S. HADLEY (1872- ), Missouri 

OPPORTUNITIES IN MISSOURI 


“I realize many will be surprised to find Missouri classified as a South¬ 
ern State. This is not strange, as Missouri is so diversified in her resources. 
She represents the South, East and West. She extends farther south of 
Mason and Dixon’s line than Virginia and Kentucky; farther north than 
Kansas; farther west than Arkansas and farther east than Iowa. 

“Many will be surprised to find it classified as an undeveloped state. 
For the six cities that transact the largest business in the United States, 
two, Kansas City and St. Louis, are located in Missouri. Missouri 
jnoduces more lead and zinc than any state. The $14,000,000 worth of 
these two minerals which the entire country produces, 123 ^ million 
dollars’ worth come from Missouri. Her packing and stockyard business 
far exceeds Chicago, and her manufactured products surpass every state 
west of the Mississippi and many of the New England states. 

“With an average yield of forty bushels per acre, Missouri in 1908 
produced a corn crop worth 100 million dollars, exceeding in production 
per acre the corn crop of any state, and in amount all but three. The 
273^ million bushels of wheat produced that year sold for a quarter of 
a million dollars more than the silver that was mined in the United 
States. Her poultry products exceeds the value of gold produced in the 
U. S. Her cotton yield is 50% greater than the average yield per acre in 
the United States. The fruit crop brings each year over $10,000,000, 
one of the leading fruit producing states. In population and wealth, 
Missouri ranks fifth, although only fifteenth in area. Missouri has a 
larger area of undeveloped land than any state south of Mason and 
Dixon’s line and east of the Mississippi. Of Missouri’s 44 million acres, 
nearly one-half have never been touched by a plow. This undeveloped 
land varies from the plateaus in the Ozarks to the rich alluvial soil of 
the Southeast, from the best cotton and tobacco to the best fruit lands in 
the United States. 

“A philosopher observed that the best for human habitation is that 
country farthest south where grass grows well. There is much philosophy 
in this declaration. The grass in the Ozark region makes that section the 
best for dairying and the raising of stock. The cheapness of the land 
places it within the reach of every homeseeker, at from $3 to $15 per acre. 
Missouri has thus more room for homebuilders and investors than any 
state south of Mason and Dixon’s line and east of the Rockies; soil that 
will produce anything raised in the temperate zone and a climate favorable 
to the conditions of life.”— Collier's Weekly, Jan., 1910. 

Mr. Hadley was born at Olathe, Kans, 1872; graduated University of 
Kansas, 1892; in law at University of Chicago; began practice in 1894, at 
Kansas City, Mo.; was assistant city counselor of Kansas City 1898-1901; 
prosecuting attorney Jackson County one term; in 1904 elected attorney- 
general of Missouri on the Republican ticket; co-operated with Governor 
Folk in enforcement of the laws against combination in restraint of trade 
and in 1906 secured evidence from officers of the Standard Oil Co., in 
regard to its ownership to alleged rival companies doing business in con¬ 
travention of the State Anti-trust law. In 1908 he was elected Governor 
of Missouri by 15,500 plurality on the Republican ticket.— Author. 


SIR MATTHEW HALE (1609-1676), England 


, TRUSTS 

“The parents of trusts were fraud and fear, and a court of conscience 
was the nurse.” 

—Attorney General v. Sands, Hardres, Quoted in 1 Perry on 

Trusts, Sec. 3, note, 1655. 

ORATORY 

“If the judge or jury has a right understanding, oratory signifies 
nothing but a waste of time and lots of words.” 

Lord Matthew Hale: No man of his time had a more complete 
mastery of the common law. 

DEBT 

“Run not into debt, either for wares sold, or money borrowed; be content 
to want things that are not of absolute necessity, rather than to run up 
the score: such a man pays at the latter end a third part more than the 
principle comes to, and is in perpetual servitude to his creditors; lives 
uncomfortably; is necessitated to increase his debts to stop his creditor’s 
mouths and many times falls into desperate courses.” 

THE PASSIONS 

“The passions are unruly cattle, and therefore you must keep them 
chained up, and under the government of religion, reason, and prudence. 
If you thus keep them under discipline they are useful servants; but 
if you let them loose, and give them head, they will be your masters, 
and unruly masters, and carry you like wild and unbridled horses, into 
a thousand mischiefs and inconveniences, besides the great disturbance, 
disorder, and discomposure they will occasion in your mind.” 

THE EFFECTS OF LYING 

“Lying is a great sin against God, who gave us a tongue to speak the 
truth and not falsehood. It is a great offense against humanity itself; 
for where there is no regard to truth, there can be no safe society between 
man and man. And it is an injury to the speaker; for, besides the dis¬ 
grace which it brings upon him, it occasions so much baseness of mind that 
he can scarcely tell truth, or avoid lying, even when he has no color of 
necessity for it, and in time he comes to such a pass that as other people 
cannot believe he speaks the truth, so he himself scarcely knows when 
he tells a falsehood. So you must be careful not to lie, as you must 
avoid coming near it. You must not equivocate, nor speak anything 
positively for which you have no authority but report, or conjecture or 
opinion.” 


BEWARE OF A BRAGGART AND FLATTERER 

“If a man whose integrity you do not very well know makes you great 
and extraordinary professions, do not give much credit to him. Probably 
you will find that he aims at something besides kindness to you and that 
when he has served his turn, or been disappointed, his regard for you 


:312 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


will cool. Beware also of him who flatters you and commends you to 
your face, or to one who, he thinks, will tell you of it; most probably 
he has either deceived and abused you, or means to do so. Remember 
the fable of the fox commending the singing of the crow, who had some¬ 
thing in her mouth which the fox wanted. Be careful that you do not 
commend yourselves. It is a sign that your reputation is small and 
sinking, if your own tongue must praise you.” 

PITYING A CRIMINAL 

“When 1 find myself strongly inclined to pity a criminal, I am compelled 
to remember that there is likewise pity due the country and its people.” 

TIME 

“Time is the wisest thing under heaven. Time and long experience 
are much more ingenious, subtle and judicious than all the wisest and 
acutest wits coexisting in the world can be.” 

HALE—DISGUISED AS A MILLER 

“The younger of two brothers had endeavored to deprive the elder of 
an estate of 500 pounds a year, by suborning witnesses to declare that he 
died in a foreign land. Coming into court, in the guise of a miller, Sir 
Matthew Hale was chosen as the twelfth juryman to sit in the case. As 
soon as the clerk of the court had sworn in the jurymen, a little dexterous 
fellow came into their room, and slipped ten gold pieces into the hands of 
eleven of the jury, and gave the miller five, while the judge was known 
tn be bribed with a great sum. The judge summed up the evidence 
in favor of the younger brother, and the jurymen were about to retire 
to give their assent, when the supposed miller stood up and addressed 
the court with such energetic and manly eloquence as astonished the 
judge and all present. He unravelled the sophistry to the very bottom, 
proved the fact of bribery, evinced the elder brother’s title to the estate, 
from the contradictory evidence of the ^vitnesses, and gained a complete 
victory in favor of truth and justice.” 

— The full story of which this is a brief epitome, is to be found in 
McGvffy^s 5th Reader. 

HALE’S NAME A SYNONYM FOR INTEGRITY AND SAGACITY 

“Wherever the English language is spoken, or the English Common law 
adopted, the name of Chief Justice Hale is a synonym for whatever 
is sagacious in legal judgment or unpurchasable in judicial integrity.” 
— -Wm. G. Bryan, of N. Y. Bar, from Lecture on Cromtvell. 

HALE A FRIEND OF SELDEN 

“Sir Matthew Hale had been the learned Selden’s intimate friend, 
and one of his executors; and because the Hobbians, and other infidels, 
would have persuaded the world that Selden was of their mind, I desired 
him to tell me the truth therein. He assured me that Selden was an ear¬ 
nest professor of the Christian faith, and so angry an adversary of Hobbes 
that he hath related him out of the room.” 

—Richard Baxter ^Character of Sir Matthew Hale.’ 

CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER 

“As a lawyer, and especially as a constitutional lawyer. Hale has, 
perhaps, never been equaled.”— Roscoe’s Lives, etc., 78. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAYWERS 


313 


COMPARED WITH SIR EDWARD COKE 

“Comparing Hale with Coke, he transcended that luminary of the 
law in the accuracy and extent of his antiquarian knowledge, in his 
intimate acquaintance with the records, and the orderly arrangements 
of the vast stores of learning which he had acquired. The respect paid 
to his legal opinions even to his own day was such, that of his brothers, 
the latter struck with the force of reasoning displayed in Hale’s argu¬ 
ments, have been known to retract the opinion they had expressed.” 

— Roscoe’s Lives, etc. 78. 

HIS WRITINGS 

^ Lord Hale, who was appointed by Oliver Cromwell, Chief Justice of 
England, wrote numerous works, as “History of the Pleas of the Crown,” 
“History of the Common Law of England,” and various Moral and Reli¬ 
gious Works. 


ABUSE OF THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS 

“All laws made for the general welfare of a country as large as om's, 
and for the protection of rights so diversified, must necessarily encounter 
some local unpopularity. It was always so from the origin of the govern¬ 
ment. But in the earlier and better days of the Republic, this mode of 
opposing them was not thought of. In 1796 the excise duty on distilled 
spirits was believed in Western Pennsylvania to be not only oppressive 
but unconstitutional. But the men of that day threw themselves back 
on the moral right of revolution and opposed the obnoxious law with 
arms in their hands. They never dreamed of carrying on the ‘Whisky- 
War’ by firing off habeas corpus at the Federal authorities. Ttyo years 
afterward there was a strongly-marked division of sentiment on the 
constitutional validity of the Sedition Law. There was but one man 
in the country who thought of asking relief at the hands of a State judge. 
The precedent was not thought a fit one to be followed, and Mr. Ser¬ 
geant’s research alone has saved it from total oblivion. Callender and 
Lyon .and Cooper served out their time, and paid their fines, or waited 
the advent of a new administration. At a later period when nullification 
arose in South Carolina, the people of that State assembled in convention, 
and abrogated the tariff act by a solemn ordinance. This, according to 
their theory, wiped it from the statute-book as completely as if it had 
been repealed by Congress. Then they authorized resistance to it, and 
judges might oppose it by habeas corpus and homine replegiando on the 
same principle that a private citizen could oppose it with pike and gun. 
We all remember the great debate in the Senate on this subject. Mr. 
Webster won his victory, so far as it was a triumph of logic and of law, 
by pressing this very point upon his adversary. ‘How,’ said he, ‘will you 
release yourselves from the grasp of the Federal judiciary?’ But the 
victory would have been on the other side, if General Hayne could have 
answered that the State judges had a right to take every case into their 
own keeping by means of the habeas corpus. He could not say so; he 
was too wise a man to believe it, and too honest to say what he did not 
know to be true. President Jackson, in Ms proclamation, used the same 
unanswerable argument. The truth is, that the exclusive authority of 
the Federal judges to decide all eases arising under the Federal laws was 
the lion in the path of nullification. It saved the country from dismem¬ 
berment then, and no one knows the day nor the hour when it may be 
necessary to invoke it again for the same purpose. When it ceases to 
be maintained, the Union of the States will become a rope of sand.” 

—Jeremiah S. Black, in argument before U. S. Supreme Court, in 
Ableman v. Booth, and the U. S. v. Booth, coming up from the 
State of Wisconsin, 'Essays and Speeches of J. S. Blackf 425-6. 




CHANCELLOR HALSBURY, hardinge Stanley giffard 
(1825- ), England 

an advocate should defend a bad cause 

“A thesis has been propounded on the other side more extravagant, 
and certainly more impossible of fulfillment; that is, that an advocate 
is bound to convince himself, by something like an original investigation, 
that his client is in the right, before he undertakes the duty of acting 
for him. I think such a contention ridiculous, impossible of performance, 
and calculated to lead to great injustice. If an advocate were to reject 
a story because it seemed improbable to him, he would be usurping the 
office of the judge, by which I mean the judicial function, whether that 
function is performed by a single man, or by the composite arrangement 
of judge and jury which finds favor with us. Very little experience of 
courts of justice would convince any one that improbable stories are very 
often true, notwithstanding their improbability.” 

—Chancellor Halshury (as quoted in the London Law Notes, for 

^Oct, 1899). 

Lord High Chancellor of England. He was first appointed to this office 
in Lord Salisbury’s short lived administration (1885-6), then in his 
second government (1895-1900), and in the reconstruction Ministry 
(Oct., 1900), and finally, in Mr. Balfour’s first administration, (July, 1902). 
Perhaps the most interesting and powerful of his judgments was that 
given in the appeal to the House of Lords by the Free Church of Scotland 
against the United Free Church.— (190J^.) 


BLACKSTONE 

“He it was who first gave the law the air of science. He found it a 
a skeleton, and he clothed it with life, color and complexion; he embraced 
the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into youth, and health, and 
beauty. ”— Y elverton. 


A FRIEND OF CURRAN 

“Yelverton was the dearest friend of Curran. The latter was attorney 
for Judge Robert Johnson, prosecuted for libel for publishing a paper; 
published by Cobbett, against Lord Redesdale, on circumstances connect¬ 
ed with Emmet’s trial. In his speech Curran appealed to Lord Avonmore, 
who presided, in the name of their early friendship and the happy hours 
they had passed together. Quoting from Cowley, he said: 

‘We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine; 

But search of deep philosophy. 

Wit, eloquence, and poesy— 

Arts which I loved; for they, my friend, were thine.’ ” 
There had been a coolness between them, but Avonmore sent for Curran, 
when the court rose, threw himself into his arms, while his eyes were 
yet wet with tears and they were friends again.— Author. 





ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1767-1804), New York 

THE SACRED RIGHTS OP MANKIND 

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old 
parchments or musty records; they are written as with a sunbeam.in the 
whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself.” 

—Alexander Hamilton. 

PREAMBLE TO CONSTITUTION 

**To form a rnore perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general 
welfare,” was composed and drafted by Alexander Hamilton. He was 
called to account for its tautology, in the expression “to form a more 
perfect union,” and when asked if perfection itself could bear the compar¬ 
ative word “more,” he retorted by pleading Shakespeare for the necessity 
sometimes of double superlative, and quoting the line from Julius Caesar, 
“most unkindest cut of all.”— Alexander Hamilton. 

LABOR IN THE LAW 

“Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies first 
in this: when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and 
night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes 
pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased 
to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.” 

—Alexander Hamilton. 

THE POWER OF THE GOVERNMENT IS SOVEREIGN 

“It is presumed to have been satisfactorily shown in the course of the 
preceding observations: (1) That the power of the government, as to 
the objects entrusted to its management, is, in its nature, sovereign. 
(2) That the right of erecting corporations is one inherent in, and insepa¬ 
rable from, the idea of sovereign power. (3) That the position, that the 
government of the United States can exercise no power but such as is 
delegated to it by its Constitution, does not militate against this principle. 
(4) That the word necessary in the general clause, can have no restrictive 
operation derogating from the force of this principle, indeed, that the 
degree in which a measure is or is not necessary, cannot be a test of con- 
stitntional right, but of expediency only. (5) That the power to erect 
corporations is not to be considered as an independent or substantive 
power, but as an incidental and auxiliary one, and was therefore more 
properly left to implication than expressly granted. (6) That the prin¬ 
ciple in question does not extend the power of that government beyond 
the prescribed limits, because it only affirms a power to incorporate 
for purposes within the sphere of the specified powers. And lastly that to 
exercise such a power in certain cases is unequivocally granted in the most 
positive and comprehensive terms. To all which it only remains to be 
added, that such a power has actually been exercised in two very eminent 
instances; namely, in the erection of two governments; one northwest 
of the River Ohio, and the other southwest—the last independent of 
any antecedent compact. And these result in a full and complete dem¬ 
onstration, that the Secretary of State and the Attorney General are 
mistaken when they deny generally to erect corporations.” 

—Alexander Hamilton's reply to Jefferson and Randolph's objection 
to establish a National Bank. Washington adopted Hamilton s plan. 


316 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


MAN—A REASONING ANIMAL 

“Man is a reasoning, rather than a reasonable, animal.” 

WASHINGTON 

“The voice of praise would in vain endeavor to exalt a name unrivalled 
in the lists of true glory.” 

THE USE OF GOVERNMENT 

“Governments are instituted because the passions of men will not con¬ 
form to the dictates of reason without restraint.” 

A HAPPY HOME 

“Six things are necessary to create a ‘happy home.’ Integrity must 
be the architect, and tidiness the upholsterer. It must be warmed by 
affection, lighted up with cheerfulness; and industry must be the ventila¬ 
tor, renewing the atmosphere and bringing in fresh salubrity day by day; 
while over all, as a protecting canopy and glory, nothing will suffice 
except the blessing of God .”—Said by Hamilton. 

“Last night I saw one of the wonders of the world, a man laboring at 
midnight for the support of his family, who had made the fortune of 
the Nation.” Thus wrote Talleyrand of Hamilton after the latter 
retired from public to private life. 

Said Judge Ambrose Spencer: “Alexander Hamilton was the greatest 
man this country ever produced. I knew him well. I was in situations 
often to observe and study him. I saw him at the bar and at home. He 
argued eases before me while I sat as judge on the bench. Webster has 
done the same. In power of reasoning Hamilton was the equal of Webster; 
and more than this can be said of no man. In creative power Hamilton 
was infinitely Webster’s superior. * * * more than any 

other man, who thought out the Constitution of the U. S., and the details 
of the government of the’Union; and, out of the chaos that existed after 
the Revolution raised a fabric every part of which is instinct with his 
thought. I can truly say that hundreds of politicians and statesmen of 
the day got both the web and woof of their thoughts from Hamilton’s 
brains. He, more than any man, did the thinking of the time.” 

POLITICS 

“The amelioration of the condition of mankind, and the increase of 
human happiness, ought to be the leading objects of every political institu¬ 
tion, and the aim of every individual, according to the measure of his power, 
in the situation he occupies.” 

LIBERTY 

“Natural liberty is the gift of the beneficent Creator of the whole 
human race.” 

THE LAWYER—HAMILTON 

Hamilton’s ability as a lawyer is shown in Le Guen v. Gouvereur and 
Kemble, argued before the Court of Errors in 1800; in Croswell v. The 
People, before the Supreme Court, in 1804; in the law discussions in the 
Federalist, (of which he wrote over one-half, at the age of 30); and in 


great sayings by great lawyers 


317 


his opinion as to the Constitutionality of the Bank of the U. S., 1791. 

In the case of Croswell v. People,—Croswell had been indicted and 
convicted of a libel upon Thos. Jefferson. The libel consisted in charging 
Mr. Jefferson with having paid one Callendar, a printer, for grossly 
slandering George Washington and John Adams, the former Presidents; 
and the defendant offered to prove the truth of the charge. But the 
testimony was overruled by Chief Justice Lewis, who held the circuit, 
and he charged the jury that it was not their province to decide on the 
intent of the defendant, or whether the libel was true or false or mali¬ 
cious; that those questions belonged exclusively to the Court. The 
motion was for a new trial for misdirection of the Judge, and those 
two great points in the case were elaborately discussed before the Supreme 
Court, and they were considered by General Hamilton, who appeared 
gratuitously for the defendant, as affecting the constitutional right 
of trial by jury in criminal cases, and the American doctrine of the 
liberty of the press. (The author’s synopsis.) 

Chancellor Kent said of the argument: “I have always considered 
General Hamilton’s argument in that cause the greatest forensic effort 
that he ever made.” 

The appellate court was equally divided, so nothing was decided, 
but Hamilton’s argument bore fruit as the N. Y. Legislature passed a 
statute the next year in conformity with his contention. 

The opinion as to the Constitutionality of the Bank of the U. S. 
was given Washington, by Hamilton, as one of his cabinet, against the 
opinions of Thomas Jefferson, his Sec. of State, and that of Edmund Ran¬ 
dolph, his Attorney-General. Hamilton’s views were adopted by Wash¬ 
ington, and were followed by Chief Justice Marshall, in McCulloch 
V. Maryland, the great judge remarking, “There was nothing in the 
whole field of argument that had not been brought forward by Hamil¬ 
ton.” The doctrine was here laid down by Hamilton “that the implied 
powers of the Constitution are upon an equality with those expressly 
granted.” And this is now the recognized canon of constitutional inter¬ 
pretation. 

HAMILTON 

“Hamilton was the most accomplished and versatile man in America, 
the most brilliant of conversationalists, the most genial of companions, 
and hospitable of hosts. * * * He made $15,000 a year in his legal practice, 
—a large sum for those times. Upon one occasion he was sent $8,000 
for winning a suit, and returned $7,000. If a case interested him, and 
a man asked his services, and was poor, he would accept nothing. Wash¬ 
ington, after the retirement of Jay, offered him the Chief Justiceship 
of the U. S. His position as the highest authority on constitutional 
law has never been rivalled. Said Chancellor Kent,—The celebrated 
libel case of Crowell v. The People, in which Hamilton reversed the law 
of libel, was the greatest forensic effort of his life. * * * I have very little 
doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer, he would 
have rivalled Socrates, or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient 
or modern times, in researches after truth and in benevolence to man¬ 
kind. The active and profound statesman, the learned and eloquent 
lawyer, would probably have disappeared in a great de^ee before the 
character of the sage and philosopher, instructing mankind by his wis¬ 
dom and elevating the country by his example.” 

—^Gertrude Atherto's Conqueror', and 501.-3 

HAMILTON AT 19 

“Hamilton was the astutest politician at nineteen years of age that 
ever lived.”— Geo. Pellew, in his Life of John Day, 53. 


ANDREW HAMILTON (1676-1741), Pennsylvania* 


POWER 

“Power may justly be compared to a great river; while kept within 
its bounds, it is both beautiful and useful; but when it overflows its 
banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before 
it, and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes. If then 
this is the nature of power, let us at least do our duty, and like wise 
men (who value freedom) use our utmost care to support liberty, the 
only bulwark against lawless power, which, in all ages, has sacrificed 
to its wild lust, and boundless ambition, the blood of the best men that 
ever lived. I hope to be pardoned, Sir, for my zeal upon this occasion; 
it is an old and wise caution, ‘That when our neighbor’s house is on fire 
we ought to take care of our own.’ For though, blessed be God, I live 
in a government where liberty is well understood, and freely enjoyed; 
yet experience has shown us all (I’m sure it has to me), that a bad prece¬ 
dent in one government, is soon set up for an authority in another; and 
therefore I cannot but think it mine, and every honest man’s duty, 
that (while we pay all due obedience to men in authority) we ought at 
the same time to be upon our guard against power, wherever we appre¬ 
hend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow-citizens. 

“* * * But to conclude; the question before the Court, and you, gentle¬ 
men of the jurj^, is not of small nor private concern; it is not the cause 
of a poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. 
No! It may, in its consequence, affect every freeman that lives under a 
British government on the main of America. It is the best cause; it 
is the best cause of liberty; and I make no doubt but your upright con¬ 
duct, this day, will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your 
fellow citizens; but every man, who prefers freedom to a life of slavery, 
will bless and honor you, as men who have baffled the attempt of tyranny; 
and, by an impartial and uncorrupt verdict, have laid a noble foundation 
for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which 
nature and the laws of our country have given us a right—the liberty— 
both of exposing and opposing arbitrary power (in these parts of the 
world, at least) by speaMng arid writing truth.” 

—In defense of John Peter Zenger, of N. Y., for libel. 

The jury brought in a verdict of ‘Not Guilty.’ The case was printed 
in New York, Boston and London. Hamilton’s effort was a half century 
before Erskine contended in the Dean of St. Asaph’s case, that the jury 
in a libel case had the right to determine both the law and the fact. 

— The Author. 


BURTON HANSON, (1851- ) Illinois 


FRANKLIN—EDUCATION 

“In reviewing the life of this remarkable man, it is not difficult to 
find the springs of success, for they were the common virtues of the 
common, every-day, useful life. These virtues were worth while then, 
and they are worth while now. The fruits of temperance, frugality, 
industry, sincerity, moderation, justice and humility are the same 
now as in Franklin’s time, and the observance of these virtues will develop 
a race of strong men now, as they did then. (Franklin set aside a page 
in a little book to each of 12 virtues,—temperance, silence, order, resolution, 
frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tran¬ 
quility, chastity—giving a week to each for 27 years, to acquire the 
habit of each and discipline his life.) Whenever we note the results of 
a great life, we see that they were attained by ceaseless efforts, strenuous 
living, and endless self-culture. Perfection is the result of wo¥k only 
and that is the reason that genius is the infinite capacity for hard work, 
and work was the presiding genius of Franklin’s life. He was never idle. 
When an apprentice to his brother learning the printer’s trade, he spent 
the noon hour studying, eating his luncheon at the same time, while 
others were idle, or amusing themselves with games. This habit of 
work formed early in life clung to him to the end. It was work, persistent, 
intelligent work, that was the keynote of this great man’s great life. 
Franklin thought more, said more, and did more that is of enduring value, 
than any man yet born under American skies, and yet he was without a 
college education. In fact, he never had but eight months’ schooling, 
but he had acquired out of his life, a well-trained, disciplined mind, and 
a sturdiness of character which schools and universities cannot give. 
America has had free education from the beginning and yet the men 
who have made America are without university degrees with such few 
exceptions that the academically educated are lost in the overwhelming 
majority who have trained themselves. The fact is that most of the 
academically educated are working for those who never had any schooling 
beyond that afforded by the country school. Much of the confusion in 
this matter arises from the fact that training and education are con¬ 
founded. Most of the young men who graduate from our schools and 
universities get scarcely any training, and, when confronted with the 
real problems of life, shrink from them, fail, and are forgotten. This 
is largely so because the way has been made too easy. I concede that 
the State ought to supply the opportunity for elementary study, but 
only those who earn their way ought to have the path beyond made 
easy. Young men who have a hunger for an education, and for the 
training and discipline that come only out of struggle and sacrifice, will 
blaze their own paths through the forest of difficulties. The others should 
be supported and pampered into intellectual incapacity. * * * 

“When the great philosopher was lying on his deathbed, Washington 
thus wrote to him:— 

‘‘ ‘If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if 
to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can 
gratify the human mind, you must have the present consolation to know 
that you have not lived in vain; and I flatter myself that it will not be 
ranked among the least grateful occurrences of your life, to be assured 
that so long as I retain my memory, you will be recollected with respect, 
veneration, and affection.’ 

“A philosophy that produces a life like this is worth while. When 
we think of Franklin, with his burden of nearly 100 years, devoting him- 


320 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


self unreservedly to the betterment of human kind everywhere, of the 
vast span of his activities, of the kindliness of his bearing, of the splendor 
of his munificence, and of his indomitable loyalty to the essentials of 
right hving and good government, we feel that tho the fashion of his 
life is old, it can never become outworn. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, 
Hamilton, Madison and Marshall were all great men—a mighty host— 
but ‘tried by the arduous greatness of things done,’ no greater man or 
nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation’s life than Benjamin 
Franklin.” 

—From Annual Address, delivered before the Iowa State Bar Ass*n, 

June, 1917. 


PATRIOTISM 

“Learning,” says Lord Bacon, “should be made subservient to action;” 
and yom* action will largely depend on the conception which you form 
in youth of the duties and privileges involved in that greatest civic 
virtue and most important element of national character which we ever 
call patriotism. What is this patriotism, this almost universal instinct 
for which more men have given their lives than for any other cause, and 
which counts more martyrs than even religion itself—this potent senti¬ 
ment which has produced so great and splendid deeds of heroic bravery 
and of unselfish devotion—which has inspired art and stimulated htera- 
ture, and furthered science—^which has fostered liberty, and won inde¬ 
pendence, and advanced civilization—and which on the other hand has 
sometimes been understood and perverted and made the excuse for 
brutal excesses and arbitrary tyranny? 

“Doctor Johnson, in his dictionary, tells us that a patriot is ‘one whose 
ruhng passion is the love of his country,’ and that patriotism is ‘love 
and zeal for one’s country,’ and we may accept these definitions as his 
serious interpretation of the words, although, as we shall see directly, 
the doctor indulged on another occasion in a more cynical explanation.” 

—Joseph Chamberlain of England, at Glasgow University, Nov. 3, 1897 



BEN HARDIN (1784-1852), Kentucky 

RESTRAINTS OF LAW—NORTH AND SOUTH 

“I know that it will be argued that there is a wider latitude given 
to the restraints of law in the Southern than in the Northern States, 
and a false assumption is built upon this circumstance, that the free use 
of personal liberty, to avenge private quarrels, gives greater bravery 
to people. But I have read, I have witnessed, and I believe that the 
people of New England, a section of this great republic where you can 
get no man to fight duels and where every man throws himself under 
the protection of the law for the redress of his private wrongs, when they 
have been called into the field for the protection of their country, have 
shown the brightest examples in modern history of personal bravery 
and national valor. Show me where men have been more prompt to 
rush upon bayonets of their country’s invaders than the heores of New 
England. Sir, courage and bravery belong to the respecters of the law 
which protects every man’s rights in a civilized community. Climate, 
in a country of such vast extent as this, may have its influence on men, 
as it is known to have on the inferior race of animals. You may meet 
the lion, distinguised for his courage and his power, in the Barbary 
States, where, conscious of his strength, you may pass him unmolested, 
if you are not the aggressor. As you descend to the more southerly 
latitudes, you meet the leopard and the panther, with whom treachery 
and ferocity are the substitutes for courage; and when you pass the 
equator you meet the hyena, the emblem of uncompromising cruelty, 
without a redeeming quality. Men may, in like manner, be affected by 
climate; and he who on the iron-bound coast of the frozen North, or on 
the arid rocks of New Plymouth, would illustrate very noble virtue 
of his own nature, not less distinguished for his piety than his patriotism, 
for his endurance than his courage, and for his generosity than his bravery, 
when transplanted to the enervating regions of the South, may become 
different and degenerated, trusting more to his interests than his pat¬ 
riotism, to advantage than to courage, and to concealed weapons than 
to bravery.” 

—For the Prosecution of Judge E. C. Wilkinson, Dr. Benj. R. 
Wilkinson, and John Murdaugh, at Harrodshurg, Ky., 1839. 
{Defended hy S. S. Prentiss. Defendants were acquitted in 15 minutes 
by the Jury.) For the Murder of Meeks and Rothivell. 


CARTER ON CHARLES O’CONOR 

“O’Conor was' the greatest lawyer of his time. He never carried his 
soul to the treasury and said: ‘what will you give me for this?’ He never 
sold the warm and honorable motives of his youth and manhood for an 
annual sum of money and an office. He never took a price for public 
liberty and pubhc happiness. He never touched the political A-cel-da- 
ma (any place stained by slaughter), and signed the devil’s bond for curs¬ 
ing tomorrow what he has blessed today. Through a long career he 
cast honor upon his honorable profession and sought dignity, not from the 
ermine or the mace, but from a straight path and a spotless life.” 

—Remarks made 20 years before O'Connor’s death, upon 'The Decider 
of the American Bar of the Preceding Generation,’ 8 'Great American 
Lawyers,’ ^1. 



GEORGE HARDING (1827-1902), Pennsylvania 

THE ART OF FELTING 

“The fact that when fibers of wool or fur are moistened and rubbed 
together, they would interweave spontaneously and form the fabric 
called felt, has been known from a remote antiquity. The process of 
felting is believed to have been anterior to the art of weaving.^ In 
Asia felted wool was used at a very early day for making tents, cushions, 
and carpets. It was known to the Greeks as early as the age of Homer, 
and is mentioned by him. and also by Xenophon and Herodotus. Its 
use was introduced into Rome from the Greeks, and it is mentioned by 
Pliny. The principal use of felting among the Greeks and Romans 
was the making of a covering for the head of the male sex, which was 
generally a sort of skull-cap, fitting closely to the head, and it was some¬ 
what used for lining shields and helmets, and representations of this 
are found on many old coins and statues. Felt hat-makers appeared in 
France, in Nuremberg and in Bavaria early in the fourteenth century. 

“I thus allude to the antiquity of the process of felting, with a view 
to call your attention to the curious circumstance that the discovery 
of the true cause of felting is of very recent date. Why the fibers of fur 
and wool should felt, or spontaneously interweave, when moistened 
and rubbed (a property which no vegetable fiber possesses) was never 
satisfactorily demonstrated until about the year of 1835. It had been 
conjectured by Monge, a French savant, in 1790, that felting was probably 
due to small scales on the fibers of fur or wool; but, as nothing of the 
kind was found by the aid of the microscope, the idea was ridiculed by 
Dr. Young and other philosophers, who contended that the felting of 
wool or fur fibers was due simply to the attraction of adhesion, the same 
principle by which the two halves of a leaden ball adhere together. 
Mr. Youatt, an intelligent English naturalist, in 1835, in investigating 
the subject of felting, carefully re-examined the fibers of wool, and 
the fur of rabbits and other animals, under a powerful anchromatic 
microscope, and found that each fiber of fur or wool has its surface 
covered with serrations of saw-like projections, and that all these serrations 
pointed in a direction from the root toward the point of the hair.” 

—From argument before the U. S. Supreme Coiirt, in Burr v. Duryee, 
1 Wallace, 531 (186^) 

Mr. Harding was one of the most celebrated Patent Lawyers this 
country has produced and tried the most complicated patent cases of 
his day. His method may be gained from the following trial: 

“In October, 1859, he was one of the counsel for the defendant in a 
trial of three weeks of an action at law, based on the Battin patent of a 
machine for breaking coal. At that time, the patent had been in litiga¬ 
tion for nine years against other defendants, with inconclusive results. 
The machine consisted of two-toothed rollers, geared together and 
rotating side by side, at a uniform speed but in opposite directions, with 
the teeth of each roller working in the spaces between the teeth of the other 
roller, but not filling those spaces. The case was too simple to require 
much argument, and therefore Mr. Harding could take occasion to be 
entertaining. He did blend entertainment with instruction, through a 
speech to the jury of nearly twenty thousand words. Such a blending 
occurred in that part of his speech which contemplated cows, as tliis: 

“ ‘Cows are what are called ruminating animals, they belong to the order 
called ruminantia. They have an extra stomach into which the food 
goes, whence it is afterward brought up and chewed again. This, as you 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


323 


Imow, is called chewing the cud, neither is mastication a mere grinding 
into powder, as Mr. Porter has told you; the salivary glands perform a 
part of the work. If the learned gentleman had these glands disordered, 
so that no saliva would be mixed with his food, he would soon suffer 
from dispepsia. So would cattle. One purpose for which we chew our 
food is that it may properly be mixed with saliva, which is the first of 
those fluids that in animals take part in the process of digestion.’ 

“The discourse on Cows and the chemistry of digestion, was scientifically 
correct.”— 8 Great American Lawyers, 6^-5. 


LOOKING FORWARD 

“Ought we to go always through life condemned of ourselves and think¬ 
ing and feeling that God must condemn us? Is this a necessity? Is it 
not possible to so live that our own conscience approves us? And we 
have the happiness of feeling that we have the approval of God and of 
our own hearts? Was it not Paul’s experience? It is true that we ought 
never to be satisfied with ourselves—that our ideal of holiness ought 
always to outrun our attainments; that we ought always to desire 
something more and better. But we may be self-approved and not 
self-satisfied. We may be dissatisfied and yet not self-condemned. 

“It is thus at eighty years of age that I look back upon the years that 
have passed since I imbibed something of the spirit of faith and hope 
and love in my grandfather’s home in Farmington. I am far from satisfied 
with this review; but I am not self-condemned. I say to my Father 
as I say to myself: T have often been defeated, but I have fought a 
good fight; I have often faltered and fallen, but I have kept up the race; 
I have been besieged all my life with doubts, and they still sometimes 
hammer at the gates, but I have kept my faith.’ And I look forward to 
the Great Adventure, which now cannot be far off, with awe, but not with 
apprehension. I enjoy my work, my home, my friends, my life. I shall 
be sorry to part with them. But all my life I have stood in the bow 
looking forward with hopeful anticipation to the life before me. When 
the time comes for my embarkation, and the ropes are cast off and I put 
out to sea, I think I shall be standing in the bow and still looking forward 
with eager curiosity and glad hopefulness to the new world to which the 
unknown voyage will bring me.” 

—Lyman Abbott, in concluding words of his ^Reminiscences^ 



JUDSON HARMON (1846- ), Ohio 

OURS A THRIFTLESS NATION 


“It is said that what were luxuries in one age of the world become 
necessaries in another; but it is easy to deceive yourself on that subject. 
You should remember that you do not really need a thing the lack of 
which causes you no worse suffering than that of ungratified desire 
or unsatisfied pride. 

“The average wages, salaries and incomes are higher in this country than 
in any other, yet our savings banks do not make a creditable showing. 
Fourteen countries greatly outrank ours in proportion of savings accounts 
to population. In thrift, as indicated by the savings banks, we stand 
at the bottom of the list of the principal nations. 

“Of every hundred of our citizens, sixty-six leave at their death no 
estate at all. Only nine leave as much as $5,000. The average estate 
left by the other twenty-five is less than $1,300. Ninety-seven of every 
hundred lose their earning power at the age of 65, and, as most of them 
have saved nothing, they become dependent on relatives or on the public. 
It is estimated that there are 1M milhon of such destitute persons in this 
country, most of whom might have escaped that sad fate. Let every 
young man who has to make his way unaided realize that to say, ‘I have 
money in the bank’ is a certificate of character and ability. 

“There is no doubt that, barring accident and disease, almost every 
family not dependent on mere unskilled day labor could lay up some 
provision for the future by cutting off waste and steadily practicing 
unhurtful self-denial. There must be a choice between passing desire 
and lasting well-being. The day of small things must not be despised; 
all growth is from little seeds. Dimes are the germs of dollars. 

“A rational person can certainly get no real enjoyment from any out¬ 
lay that leads to hand-to-mouth existence; he has no safeguards against 
misfortune that are sure to come sooner or later to everyone. 

“Among all material pleasure there is none so great as that which 
springs from a store laid by for future wants, especially for the needs 
of those for whose well being you have become responsible. And when 
you have gathered that store by steadfastly refusing thriftless indul¬ 
gence, you have satisfaction that outweighs and outlasts all fieeting 
joys. I speak from my own experience, and I can call to witness thou¬ 
sands of others who have traveled the same road.” 

—In Youth's Companion, Dec., 1916. 


JOHN JAY 

“If John Jay had not gone to England and consummated that treaty 
it would be difficult to tell what the territory that now comprises the 
United States would be. Another war might have followed. And the 
outcome of a war at that time is difficult to imagine now. Undoubtedly 
John Jay saved the United States.” 

—At Jay Banquet, Kansas City, Mo., Nov. IJf, 1911. 

Judson Harmon remained on his father’s farm till 21; studied at Denison 
University, and Cincinnati Law School; entered the practice with George 
Hoadly, in Cincinnati; Atty.-General, under Cleveland, 1895-7; professor 
of law. University of Cincinnati, O., 1896; Governor of Ohio, 1908-12. 
He is an anti-imperialist, tariff revisionist, and is opposed to central¬ 
ization of power in the Federal Government. 


ROBERT Y. HAYNE (1791-1839), South Carolina 

SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE SOUTH 

“What, sir, was the conduct of the South dirring the Revolution? 

“Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in the glorious struggle. 
But great as is the praise which belongs to her I think at least equal 
honor is due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren 
with a generous zeal which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their 
interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed 
of neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might 
have found in their situation a guaranty that their trade would be for¬ 
ever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on all 
considerations either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the con¬ 
flict, and fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of free¬ 
dom. Never was there exhibited in the history of the world higher 
examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance 
than by the Whigs of Carolina during the Revolution. The whole State, 
from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force 
of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they 
were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The ‘plains of Carolina’ 
drank up the most precious blood of her victims. Black and smoking 
ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children! 
Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable 
swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina 
(sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions) proved by 
her conduct that tho the soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people 
was invincible.” 

Hayne attained great prominence as a lawyer; member of the S. C. 
Legislature; attorney-general of the State; U. S. Senator, (1823-1832), 
had his great debate with Daniel Webster in the Senate, in 1830; and was 
afterwards Governor of S. C. 


THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES 

“A few years after our Civil War, a lawyer in a city of the Middle West, 
who had been selected to deliver the Memorial Day oration, came to a 
friend of his in despair because he could write nothing but the common¬ 
place about those who had died for the Union and for the freedom of a 
race which had been uttered many times before, and he asked for advice. 
‘Take the funeral oration of Pericles for a model,’ was the reply. ‘Use 
his words, where they will fit, and dress up the rest to suit our day.’ 
The orator was surprised to find how much of the oration could be used 
bodily, and how much, with adaptation, was germane to his subject.” 

—James Ford Rhodes, in ^Historical Essays.’ 



JOHN HEMPHILL (1803-1862), Texas 

THE HOMESTEAD LAW 

“W^e do not intend to assert the proposition, that the old homestead 
remains until a new is gained. This would perhaps too much embarrass 
and obscure the condition and rights of property, to receive judicial 
sanction; there being no law or statute to that effect. But while this is 
admitted, we must remember the wise and beneficent purposes of the 
homestead exemption; that it was intended to secure the peace, repose, 
independence, and subsistence of citizens and families; that it was placed 
beyond the reach of creditors, an asylum upon which they might gaze, 
but which they could neither enter nor disturb; a right so strongly se¬ 
cured, founded upon such high policy, cannot be lost by the mere absence 
of the party or family intended to be benefited. The homestead is not 
to be regarded as a species of prison bounds, which the owner cannot pass 
over without pains and penalties. His necessities and circumstances 
may frequently require him to leave his homestead for a greater or less 
period of time. He may leave on visits of business or pleasure, for the 
education of his children, or to acquire in some more favorable location, 
means to improve his homestead; or for the sustenance of his family 
or he may intend to abandon, provided he can sell. But let him leave 
for what purpose he may, or be his intentions what they may, provided 
they are not those of total relinquishment or abandonment, his right 
to the exemption cannot be regarded as forfeited.” 

— The above is from his decision in Shepherd v. Cassidy, 20 Texas, 21^.. 

He was appointed a member of the Supreme Court of the Republic of 
Texas, in 1840, and held that office till 1858, 18 years, when he was 
elected to the Senate of the United States, from which he withdrew upon 
the passage of the ordinance of secession of the Texas convention which 
met in 1861. 

PREFERRED THE CIVIL LAW 

“I cannot say that I am very much in favor of either chancery or the 
common law system. I should much prefer the civil law to have continued 
in force for j^ears to come. But inasmuch as the chancery system, to¬ 
gether with the common law, has been saddled upon us, the question is 
now, whether we shall keep it up as it is known in the courts of England, 
the United States, and many of the states, and in the United States 
courts that will be established here, we should oppose this innovation; 
for I do not know any alteration which could be a greater innovation than 
to subject all chancery cases to a trial by jury.” 


JUDGE HEMPHILL’S HABITS 

“He spent a solitary life, without a wife and without relatives, in the 
state of his adoption (having been born in S. C.) whose prosperity and 
greatness he loved and worked to achieve. It is due to him, that his 
remains should, as they do, rest in the state cemetery and a modest and 
becoming monument marking the spot where he lies and his likeness 
should be suspended in the room of the Supreme Court where his 
presence always commanded the respect due his exalted position of 
Chief Justice.”— Judge 0. M. Roberts of Texas. 


PATRICK HENRY (1733-1799), Va. 

DANGERS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION 

“This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I 
come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. 
Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints toward 
monarchy, and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every 
true American? Your president may easily become king. Your Senate is 
so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed 
to what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may con¬ 
tinue forever unchangeably this government, altho horridly defective. 
Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will 
be in the hands of your enemies. It is on a supposition that your Ameri¬ 
can governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this govern¬ 
ment are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction put it in 
their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs should they be bad 
men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the Eastern to the Western 
Hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the 
contingency of our rulers being good or bad ? Show me that age and country 
where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance 
of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I 
say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute 
certainty, every such mad attempt. 

“If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy 
is it for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands, and 
if he be a man of address, it will be attached to him, and it will be the 
subject of long meditation with him to seize the first suspicious moment 
to accomplish his design, and, sir, with the American spirit solely relieve 
you when this happens ? I would rather infinitely—and I am sure most 
of this Convention are of the same opinion—have a king, lords, and 
commons, than a government so replete with such insupportable evils. 
If we make a king we may prescribe the rules by which he shall rule 
his people, and interpose such checks as shall prevent him from infring¬ 
ing them; but the president, in the field, at the head of his army, can 
prescribe the terms on which he shall reign master, so far that it will 
puzzle any American ever to get his neck under the galling yoke. I 
cannot with patience think of this idea. If ever he violate the laws, one 
of two things will happen: he will come at the head of the army to carry 
everything before him, or he will give bail, or do what Mr. Chief Justice 
will order him. If he be guilty, will not the recollection of his crimes 
teach him to make one bold push for the American tlu’one? Will not 
the immense difference between being master of everything and being 
ignominiously tried and punished powerfully excite him to make this 
bold push? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposi¬ 
tion? Away with your president! We shall have a king: the army will 
salute him monarch; your militia will leave you, and assist in making him 
king, and fight against you: and what have you to oppose this force? 
What will then become of you and your rights? Will not absolute des¬ 
potism ensue?” 

—From a speech June 5, 1788, in Va. Convention to ratify the 

constitution of the U. S. 

In 1773 Robt. Carter Nicholas, “who had himself enjoyed the first 
practice at the bar,” turned over his unfinished legal business to Patrick 
Henry. Washington invited him into his cabinet, as Secretary of State, 
in 1795; and three months later to be Chief-Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States,—both of which he declined. He made a 
fortune in the law. 


328 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH 

“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of Hope. 
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song 
of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise 
men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty ? Are we disposed 
to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, 
hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? 
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am^ willing to 
know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have 
but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of 
experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. 
And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the 
conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those 
hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves 
and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has 
been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. 
Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this 
gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations 
which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies 
necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown our¬ 
selves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win 
back our love ? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements 
of war and subjugation—the last arguments to which kings resort. 

“I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose 
be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other 
possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter 
of the world to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, 
sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. 
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the 
British ministry have been so long forging. 

“And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, 
we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything 
new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject 
up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall 
we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we 
find which have not been already exhausted ? 

“Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have 
done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now 
coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have sup¬ 
plicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have 
implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry 
and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances 
have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been 
disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of 
the throne. 

“In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace 
and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to 
be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for 
which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon 
the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we 
have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of 
our contest shall be obtained—we must fight! I repeat it, sir—we 
must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is 
left us. 

“They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with so formidable 
an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week 
or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a 
British guard shall be stationed in every house; shall we gather strength 
by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


329 


resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and bugging the delusive 
phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot? 

“Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which 
the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people 
armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we 
possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. 

“Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God 
who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends 
to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone: it is 
to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. 
If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the 
contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains 
are forged. ^ Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The 
war is inevitable. And let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! 

“It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, 
but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that 
sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resotinding arms. 
Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle ? What is 
that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace 
so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid 
it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for 
me, give me liberty, or give me death.” 

—At a Revolutionary Convention, March 23, 1775, in Richmond, 

. Va. {From Wirfs Life of Henry.) 

THE BRITISH DEBTS CASE 

“The first point which I shall endeavor to establish will be, that debts 
in common wars become subject to forfeiture; and if forfeited in common 
wars, much more must they be so in a revolution war, as the late contest 
was. In considering this subject, it will be necessary to define what a 
debt is. I mean by it an engagement or promise by one man to pay 
another for a valuable consideration an adequate price. By a contract thus 
made for a valuable consideration, there arises what, in the law phrase, 
is called a lien on the body and goods of the promisor or debtor. This 
interest which the creditor becomes entitled to in the goods and body 
of his debtor is such as may be taken from, the creditor, if he found 
the subject of a hostile country. The position is supported by the follow¬ 
ing authorities. (Here Grotius and Vattel were cited.) 

“This authority decides, in a most clear and satisfactory manner, that, 
as a nation, we had powers as extensive and unlimited as any nation 
on earth. This great writer, after stating the equality and independence 
of nations, and who are and who are not enemies, does away the dis¬ 
tinction between corporal and incorporal rights, and declares that war 
gives the same right over the debts as over the goods of an enemy. He 
illustrates his doctrine by the instance of Alexander’s remitting to the 
Thessalians a debt due to the Theban commonwealth. This is a case 
in point; for Thebans might not have remitted the debts due them to 
that people, as well as the debts due them by his allies, the Thessalians? 
Let me not be told that he was entitled to the goods of the Thebans 
because he had conquered them. If he could remit a debt by those whose 
claim of friendship was so inferior, those who were only attached to him 
by the feeble ties of contingent and temporary alliance; if his Mace¬ 
donians, his immediate and natural subjects, were indebted to the Thebans 
could he not have remitted their debts? 

“This author states, in clear, unequivocal terms, by fair inference an 
unavoidable deduction, that when two nations are at war, either nation 
has a right, according to the laws of nature and nations, to remit to its 
own citizens debts which they may owe to the enemy. If this point 
wanted further elucidation, it is pointedly proved by the authority 


330 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


which I first quoted from Grotius that it is an inseparable concomitant 
of sovereign power, that debts and contracts similar to those which 
existed in America at the time the war with Great Britain broke out, 
may, in virtue of the eminent domain or right, be canceled or destroyed. 
‘A king has a greater right in the goods of Ids subjects for the public 
advantage than the proprietors themselves. And when the exigency of 
the State requires a supply, every man is more obliged to contribute 
toward it than to satisfy his creditors. The sovereign may discharge 
a debtor from the obligation of paying either for a certain time or for¬ 
ever.’ What language can be more expressive than this? Can the mind 
of man conceive anything more comprehensive? 

“Rights are of two sorts: private and inferior, or eminent and superior, 
such as the community had over the persons and estates of its members 
for the common benefit. The latter is paramount to the former. A king 
or chief of a nation has a greater right than the owner himself over any 
property in the nation. The individual who owns private property 
cannot disp^e of it, contrary to the will of his sovereign, to injure the 
public. Thfs author is known to be no advocate for tyranny, yet he 
mentions that a king has a superior power over the property in his nation, 
and that by virtue thereof, he may discharge his subjects forever from 
debts which they owe to an enemy. The instance which our author 
derives from the Roman history affords a striking instance of the length 
to which the necessities and exigencies of a nation will warrant it to go. 
It was a juncture critical in the Roman affairs. But their situation was 
not more critical or dangerous than ours at the time these debts were 
confiscated. It was after the total defeat and dreadful slaughter at 
Cannae, when the State was in the most imminent danger. Our situation 
in the late war was equally perilous. Every consideration must give 
way to the public safety. That admirable Roman maxim, salis popidi 
su'prema lex, governed that people in every emergency. It is a maxim 
that ought to govern every community. It was not peculiar to the 
Roman people. The impression came from the same source from which 
we derive our existence. Self-preservation, that great dictate implanted 
in us by nature, must regulate our conduct; we must have a power to 
act according to our necessities, and it remains for human judgment 
to decide what are the proper occasions for the exercise of this power. 

“Call to your recollection our situation during the late arduous contest. 
Was it not necessary in our day of trial to go to the last iota of human 
right? The Romans fought for their altars and household gods. By these 
terms they meant everything dear and valuable to men. Was not our 
stake as important as theirs ? But many other nations engage in the most 
bloody wars for the most trivial and frivolous causes. If other nations 
who carried on wars for the mere point of honor, or a punctilio of gal¬ 
lantry, were warranted in the exercise of tliis power, were not we who 
fought for everything most inestimable and valuable to mankind, justified 
in using it ? Our finances were in a more distressing situation than theirs 
at this awful period of our existence. Ours was in opposition to the most 
grievous oppression; we existed, and our resistance was approved and 
blessed by heaven. The most illustrious, who have considered human 
affairs, when they have involved human rights and considered how far 
a nation is warranted to act in cases of emergency, declare that the only 
ingredient essential to the rectitude and validity of its measure is, that 
they be for the public good. I need hardly observe that the confiscation 
of these debts was for the public good.” 

(The case was argued twice; in 1791, before Judge Johnson and Blair 
of the Supreme Court, and Griffin, Judge of the District, and again in 
1793, before Judges Jay and Iredell, and the same district Judge. The 
case was decided against Mr. Henry, in favor of the English creditor 
(2 Paine’s C. Ct. Rep., 688). The above argument was made in the 
first hearing and is taken from Wirt’s Life of Henry. Mr. Ronald, 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


331 


Mr. Baker, Mr. Wickham, and Mr. Starke, for plaintiff; Mr. Henry, 
Mr. Marshall (afterwards Chief Justice), Mr. Alexander Campbell, 
and Mr. Innis (Attorney-General of Va.), for defendant. Mr. Henry 
occupied three days in his speech, from which the above is taken—to 
a crowded court-room, where the greatest living orators drew legis¬ 
lators, senators, ladies of fasliion, and everybody as listeners.) 

PATRICK HENRY ON MADISON 

“I can forgive anything else in Mr. Jefferson, except his corruption of 
Mr. Madison.”— 2 Beveridge's Marshall, 79 note. 


HENRY CLAY ON THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 

“Look at all history—consult her pages, ancient or modern—look at 
human nature; look at the contest in which you would be engaged in 
the supposition of war follovdng upon the dissolution of the Union, 
such as I have suggested; and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt 
that the final disposition of the whole ^would be some despot treading 
down the liberties of the people—the final result would be the extinction 
of this last and glorious light which is leading all mankind who are gazing 
upon it in the hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which 
prevails here will sooner or later be diffused throughout the whole civilized 
world. Sir, can you lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you 
yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have 
depicted in colors far too tame, of which the result would be if that direful 
event to which I have referred should ever occur? Sir, I implore gentlemen, 
I adjure them, whether from the South or the North, by all that they 
hold dear in this world—by their love of liberty—by all their veneration 
for their ancestors—by all their regard for posterity—by all their gratitude 
to Him who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless bless¬ 
ings—by all the duties which they owe to mankind—and by all the duties 
which they owe to themselves, to pause, solemnly to pause at the edge of 
the precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap be taken into the 
yawning abyss below, from which none who ever take it shall return in 
safety. Finally, Mr. President, and in conclusion, I implore as the best 
blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me upon earth that if the dire¬ 
ful event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not survive 
to behold the sad and heartrending spectacle.” 

—Henry Clay, on ^The Compromise of 1850', Feb. 5 and 6, in U. S. 

Senate. 

Clay died in 1852.— The Author. 



BENJAMIN H. HILL (1823-1882), Georgia 


ROBERT E. LEE 

“When the future historian shall come to survey the character of Lee 
he will find it rising like a huge mountain about the undulating plain of 
humanity, and he must lift his eyes high toward heaven to catch its 
summit. He possessed every virtue of other great commanders without 
their vices. He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, 
a soldier without cruelty, a victor without oppression and a victim 
without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices, a private 
citizen without wrong, a neighbor without reproach, a Christian without 
hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar without his am¬ 
bition, Frederick without his tyranny, Napoleon without his selfishness 
and Washington without his reward. He was obedient to authority 
as a servant, and royal in authority as a true king. He was as gentle 
as a woman in life, modest and pure as a virgin in thought, watchful as 
a Roman vestal in duty, submissive to law as Socrates and grand in battle 
as Achilles.”— Passages from his Eulogy on Robt. E. Lee. 

FATE 

“Who has not felt how he works—the dreadful, conquering spirit of 
Ill ? Who cannot see in the circle of his own society the fated and fore¬ 
doomed to woe and evil? Some call the doctrine of Destiny a dark 
creed; but, for me, I would fain try and think it a consolatory one. It 
is better, with aU one’s sins upon one’s head, to deem one’s self in the 
hands of Fate than to think with our fierce passions and weak repen¬ 
tances; with our resolves so loud, so vain, so ludicrously, despicably weak 
and frail; with our dim, wavering, wretched conceits about virtue, and 
our irresistible propensity to wrong—that we are workers of our future 
sorrow or happiness. If we depend on our strength, what is it against 
mighty circumstances? If we look to ourselves, what hope have we? 
Look back at the whole of your life, and see how Fate has mastered you 
and it. Think of your disappointments and your successes. Has your 
striving influenced one or the other? A fit of indigestion puts itself 
between you and honors and reputation; an apple plops on your nose 
and makes you a world’s wonder and glory; a fit of poverty makes a 
rascal of you, who were and are still an honest man; clubs, trumps, or 
six lucky mains at dice, make an honest man for life of you, who ever 
were, will be and are a rascal. Who sends the illness ? Who causes the 
apple to fall ? Who deprives you of your worldly goods ? Or who shuffles 
the cards and brings trumps, honor, virtue and prosperity back again? 
You call it chance; aye, and so it is chance that when the floor gives way 
and the rope stretches tight the poon wretch before St. Sepulche’s clock 
dies. Only with us, clear-sighted mortals, we can’t see the rope by which 
we hang, and know not when, nor how, the drop may fall.” 

—In this connection read the Ninth Chapter of Romans. 

A CALL TO ARMS 

“The army is our only safety. It is in the ranks, in the forefront of 
battle where independence is to be achieved. I discard all mere personality, 
at this moment, and place life and fortune on the altar of our country, 
and offer them a free sacrifice for the Sunny South. I could at this moment 
take in my arms and press to my heart the most hated foe I have on 
earth, if he will but come to the rescue of our beloved and beleagured 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


333 


land. Nay, more. I could cover him with immortelles, decorate him 
with garlands of flowers, and crown him with wreaths of laurel or of 
bay. Awake! Arise! Ho, to the rescue every one! Our country is in 
danger! Let us conquer victory or welcome glorious death!” 

—From speech made in the late winter of 1865 —just before Ap¬ 
pomattox—in a tour of Georgia, calling the citizens to arms. 

Hill was born in Jasper Co., Ga.; educated in the University of the 
State; admitted to the bar, 1845; State Representative, 1851-60; sup¬ 
ported the Union until the passage of the secession ordinance; Senator 
from the State, in Confederate Congress; prisoner of war, in New York, 
a short time in 1865; representative in Congress, 1875-6, resigned upon 
being elected to Senate, 1876, where he served till his death. His life 
has been written by his son, 1891. 

He was the leader of the Gulf States Bar, and the equal of any lawyer 
of his day. Some of his fees were enormous for the South,—one $65,000. 
What he made at the bar, he lost as a planter. He was always princely 
and his hand was open. Perhaps he was not the superior of Toombs as 
a debater; perhaps not the superior of Cobb as an orator; perhaps not 
the superior of Stephens as a logician; but he was the inferior of none of 
them in any admirable attribute of the human character, or any great 
quality of the human mind, and he ■y^as a match for all of them as 
a statesman, as a patriot, and as a man. It was when he first heard 
him that Toombs paid the splendid compliment and clothed it in the 
classic speech that is as follows:— 

“You may bury him under a mountain that will overtop Pelion and 
make Ossa a wart, and he will rise again more formidable than ever 
and more ready for the conflict. He is bound to succeed. He was born 
to excel.” 

BENJ. H. HILL 

“Capt. Wirz was offered his life if he would only implicate Mr. Davis 
in the horrors of Andersonville. Wirz refused the bribe. Hill made this 
comment: 

“ ‘Sir, what Wirz within two hours of his execution, would not say for 
his hfe the gentleman from Maine (Jas. G. Blaine) says to keep himself 
and his party in power. Christianity is a falsehood, humanity a lie, 
civilization is a cheat, or the man who will not make a false charge for 
his life was never guilty of willful murder.’ ”— EilVs reply to Blaine, in 
House of Representatives, in 1876. 

HILL’S PLEA FOR A REUNITED COUNTRY 

“The faces I see before me are those of young men; had I not known 
this I would not have appeared before you. Men in whose hands destinies 
of our Southland lie, for love of her I break my silence, to speak to you 
a few words of respectful admonition. The past is dead; let it bury 
its dead, its hopes and aspirations; before you lies the future. A future 
full of golden promise; a future full of recompense, a future of expanding 
national glory, before which all the world shall stand amazed. Let me 
beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling and to take 
your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consumma¬ 
tion devoutly to be wished—a reunited country.”— Said by Hill. 

Hill’s nearly last words were, “I know my Redeemer liveth,” and his 
very last words, “Almost home.”— Author. 


NICHOLAS HILL (1806-1859), New York 

INFLUENCE 

“There is nothing in what is termed personal influence with courts. 
He who thoroughly understands his case and the law applicable to it 
wiU have the attention of the judges. Argue the case yourself; never 
stop to consider who is against you, there is not so much difference after 
all between men as some suppose, the language of the law is the same to 
all.”— To M. S. Newton. 

CALLING ABLE COUNSEL TO ASSIST 

“In my early practice I was once induced to procure the aid of a lawyer 
who was supposed to have great influence with the court to assist me in 
urging the judge to inflict a very light sentence on a client of mine, who 
had been convicted of an offense in which there were mitigating circum¬ 
stances and which admitted of a severe or a light punishment, in the 
discretion of the court. The lawyer to whom I applied was at the time 
a State Senator, and was really a man of great influence and ability, 
while I was young and inexperienced and almost a stranger to the judge. 
My client was a man of some standing in the community; his sentence 
was suspended until the last day of the term; when he was brought into 
court to receive it, his wife and children accompanied him by the advice 
of my associate, who believed that their presence would aid him in 
softening the mind of the court. I saw by this that even he needed 
outside influence to aid him, powerful as he 'was supposed to be with the 
court. My friend made a pathetic appeal to the court. It was apparently 
very effective, and I believed with his great influence he would succeed 
in convincing the judge that my client should only be fined some nominal 
amount and discharged, but what was my astonishment and horror 
when I listened to a sentence which was to incarcerate him in jail for one 
year and compel him to pay a fine of $200. I will not attempt to describe 
the scene that followed; suffice it to say that wife, children, friends 
and myself were plunged into the deepest sorrow. The influence of my 
counsel had failed and my client was ruined.” 

Hill got a modification of the sentence by his own efforts and the im¬ 
prisonment remitted and the fine reduced to $50.— Author. 

NICHOLAS HILL 

“The administration of justice presents the noblest field for the exercise 
of human capacity. It forms, as has been well said, the ligament that 
binds society together. Upon its broad foundations is erected the 
edifice of public liberty. To lend humble aid, in raising this structure 
to a valued privilege, but to stand pre-eminent among those who at the 
bar or upon the bench have beautified and adorned the temple of justice, 
is among the loftiest positions allotted to man.” 

—From Eulogy of Nicholas Hill, by his 'partner, Jno. H. Reynolds. 


GEORGE HOADLY (1826-1902), Ohio 

ADVICE TO YOUNG LAWYER 

“In my opinion there are three things which I regard of primary im¬ 
portance to the young lawyer who would secure a large practice and an 
honorable reputation in the community. One of these acquirements, 
and the one to which I would first call attention, is the possession of 
faculty, or, if you please to call it, genius or talent. And while a man is 
responsible for the employment of the best he has of this, he certainly 
cannot be held responsible for more than that. This leads me to say 
that no young lawyer is to be blamed for the lack of a greater degree 
of faculty than he was given by the Almighty. But such a young man 
certainly is to be* blamed for the misuse of the talents which the Creator 
has bestowed upon him. Every young lawyer has at his command two 
things which can insure for him success—that is, as much success as 
his natural gifts entitle him to— and that is absolute integrity to his 
clients and to himself. The successful lawj^er depends much upon his 
true courage and absolute integrity in dealing with his adversaries. 
Nor can he succeed without industry, for unremitting labor is required 
until he has given evidence of his talents and integrity. The young lawyer 
must patiently await his time, and he who is a faithful and diligent 
laborer in acquiring knowledge, and adds to this fidelity to his clients, 
will eventually succeed. A great many lawyers of only moderate ability, 
having in early life adopted this course of action, have been very successful 
in their profession.” 

IMMORTALITY OF A GREAT JUDGE 

“I have seen in Venice, around the frieze of the large room in the 
Doges’ palace, the names, with a single exception, of all the Doges of 
Veneie,—great men in their day and generation, to whose hands had been 
committed, each for a little time, the power of the Republic. These men 
are forgotten. Not half a dozen names of those hundreds are remem¬ 
bered or ever mentioned now. In history only the victor Doges, or those 
in whose hands was the government of Venice during the hours of ex¬ 
treme perplexity or prosperity, appear; and so it will be with us. The 
time will come when the Presidents of our Republic will be numbered by 
hundreds. Great as his high office may seem during the brief tenure of 
power allotted to each, they will, nevertheless, be very obscure persons, 
indeed, when compared with the men to whom was vouchsafed the 
opportunity of recording in judicial judgment decisions of lasting import, 
upon which depend the lives, liberty, and property of those generations, 
as well as of ages to follow. To-day, Lord Coke’s memory is gratefully 
preserved by every American lawyer, while even the names of the Prime 
Ministers of James the First have been forgotten.” 

—Remarks hi U. S. Supreme Court, upon the death of Justice 
John A. Campbell, of La., Apr. 6, 1889. 

AGAINST JURY SYSTEM 

“I have long considered the jury system as a defect in our jurisprudence. 
It is illogical in theory and mischievous in practice. In theory it is illog¬ 
ical because it sustitutes a tribunal of untrained thinkers (if, indeed, 
they may be called thinkers at all), for the experts who preside in our 
courts, experts who are trained in the analysis of facts and the solution 
of doubts, growing out of such analysis, as well as in the legal principles. 
No man can feel at all certain that the verdict of a jury is right in any 


336 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


case, and in suits against corporations the jury system is the most potent 
adjunct to the levying of blackmail, and the dishonest practices of 
‘ambulance lawyers,’ which exists. The amount of harm done by what 
jurors conceive to be their right or duty, under the pretense which they 
make to their consciences, of disposing the charity of corporations in 
this country is incalculable. Another objection reinains to the jury sys¬ 
tem; it is its deteriorating influence upon the bar, its tendency to con¬ 
vert thinkers and scholars and the followers of logical processes into 
stump-speakers and blatherskites. The man who is capable of wringing 
sympathy or tears from a jury, and there are many such in the United 
States, is a foe to justice in a criminal case. With the rule that the 
criminal defendant shall not be required to testify, and with the per¬ 
suasive efforts of orators, the American system contrasts very badly 
in results with the method in which justice is dispensed in France. What¬ 
ever may be said of the turbulent and disorderly conduct of some of the 
Judges in the French Republic, it cannot be denied that.as a rule, French 
jurists reach just results far more frequently than in this country, where 
the popular result is that which is usually achieved in cases of this kind. 

“There are eases in which the jury system may be justifled. There 
are those cases in which public prejudice is strongly enlisted upon two 
sides, and in which the judge may be fairly entitled to have the right 
to transfer the responsibility of passing upon the facts to some tribunal 
(a jury or other) which will relieve him from the injury that would be the 
result of the prejudice that might be enlisted against him personally. 
Such cases, however, are very rare, and the power to select a board of 
referees, if conferred upon the judge, would enable him to escape from 
the scandal that would be the result of his popular identifleation, after 
decision, with one or other of the parties. It certainly is not necessary 
for this purpose that twelve men should be called from their avocations 
into a jury-box. 

“Another and very serious objection to the jury system yrould be ob-. 
viated by dispensing with the requirement of unanimity. If verdicts 
were permitted to be found by a majority or two-thirds of a jury, they 
would be as likely to be right as they are now, and would avoid the 
mistrial that so frequently occurs in consequence of there being what is 
called ‘a hung jury.’ In cities (I do not know how far it is true in the 
country) the decent citizens, the very men who would make the best 
jurors, at least so far as integrity goes, seek to escape from the performance 
of the duty. Every judge knows the very great extent to which shifts 
and devices of all sorts and kinds are resorted to as excuses for citizens 
who seek to escape from the useless consumption of time involved in 
the performance of their duty. It is said that bribery is not unfrequently 
employed in such cases, but of this I know nothing. Finally, let me say 
that during forty years of active service at the bar and on the bench 
in Ohio I never saw but one struck jury. Of course, I must be under¬ 
stood to mean this, not that I have not seen men in the box whose names 
had been procured by the process of striking a jury, but that I never 
saw twelve such men sitting together in a case, except once in Wilmington, 
Clinton County, Ohio. I name the county out of respect for the willing¬ 
ness displayed to serve on juries in the case I refer to by that class of 
citizens who, in Hamilton County, would have been sufficiently alert 
and successful with excuses to reduce the jury below the number of 
twelve struck jurors, and thus make it an ordinary tales jury.” 

—From the Western Reserve Law Journal, Feb., 1896. 

Judge Hoadly was born in New Haven, Conn., educated at Western 
Reserve College, O., and at the Harvard Law School; admitted to the 
bar in 1847; judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, O., 1851; city 
solicitor ’55, and was on the bench of the new superior court 1858-66. In 
1883 was elected governor of Ohio; after 1887 he practiced in N. Y. City. 

— Author. 


BARTHOLOMEW HOAR, Ireland 

THE CORNISH PLUNDERER 

“The Cornish plunderer, intent on the spoil, callous to every touch 
of humanity, shrouded in darkness, holds out false lights to the tempest- 
tost vessel, and lures her and her pilot to that shore upon which she must 
be lost forever—the rock unseen, the ruffian invisible, and nothing appar¬ 
ent but the treacherous signal of security and repose. So, this prop 
of the throne, this pillar of the State, this stay of religion, the ornament 
of the Peerage, this common protector of the people’s privileges and of 
the crown’s prerogatives (Marquis of Headfort), descends from these 
high grounds of character to muffie himself in the gloom of his own base 
and dark designs; to play before the eyes of the deluded wife and the 
deceived husband (Rev, Charles Massy), the falsest lights of love to 
the one, and of friendly and hospitable regards to the other, until she is 
at length dashed upon the hard bosom where her honor and happiness 
are wrecked and lost forever. The agonized husband beholds the ruin 
which those sensations of horror which you can better feel than I can 
describe. Her upon whom he had embarked all his hopes and all his 
happiness in this life, the treasure of all his earthly felicities, the rich 
fund of all his hoarded joys, sunk before his eyes into an abyss of infamy, 
or if any fragment escape, escaping to solace, to gratify, and to enrich 
her vile* destroyer. 

“Such, gentlemen, is the act upon which you are to pass yom- judgment, 
such is the injury upon which you are to set a price, and I lament that the 
moderation of the pleader has circumscribed within such narrow limits 
the discretion you are to exercise upon the damages. You cannot exceed 
the damges laid in the declaration. I lament, and so I hope do you, that 
you cannot, for the damages laid do not exceed one year’s income of the 
noble Lord’s estates. (The damages were laid at 40,000 pounds.) The 
life of the adulterer is in some degree in the power of the injured husband. 
If the husband kill the adulterer caught in the act, the killing is not 
murder: what, according to the noble Lord’s own estimate, would be the 
value of the noble Lord’s life? In mine, and perhaps in your estimation, 
the value of the noble Lord’s life would not be very high; but take it 
according to his own, and it is invaluable. The ransom of his life ought 
to be the measure of your damages. What can he plead? Is it that he 
too has a wife and children? Is it that as a double adulterer he comes 
into this court of justice and interposes the innocence of his family 
between his crime and your justice? Are his tithes and honors, as they 
are vulgarly called, to dazzle your eyes and blind you, to the demerits 
of his conduct? No, no. What are titles conferred by kings if the souls 
of those who wear them be not ennobled by the King of kings? These 
badges of distinction, these splendid emblems of shining merit; these 
rewards conferred by grateful sovereigns on eminent attainments in 
science, or achievements in war, may be well allowed to adorn wisdom 
and virtue, but cannot make the fool wise, the coward brave, or the 
knave honest.”— In Massy v. The Marqnis of Headfort for Plaintiff. 


GEO. F. HOAR (1826-1904), Massachusetts 


GREAT SONS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

“No American State, no civilized nation, has contributed more illus¬ 
trious names to jurisprudence than Parsons and Mason and Story and 
Shaw. In statesmen, Bradford, and Carver, Endicott, and Winthrop; 
Vane, Otis, Samuel Adams, Quincy and Hawley; John Adams and his 
son, whose biographies almost make up the history of the country for 
eight years; Pickering, who filled in turn every seat in the Cabinet; 
Webster, the greatest teacher of constitutional law save Marshall; 
Andrew, the great war governor; Sumner, the echoes of whose voice seem 
yet audible in the Senate chamber. 

“In science, Bowditch, and John Pickering, and Wyman and Pierce; 
and which contains the birthplace of Franklin, and the home and grave of 
Agassiz; Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin; Sam’l F. Morse, the 
inventor of the telegraph; Dr. W. T. G. Morton, the discoverer of the 
uses of ether. 

“In History, Bancroft, Sparks, Motley, Prescott, Palfrey, Parkman; 
and in Poets, Byrant, Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes; 
in Oratory, Quincy, Otis, Choate, Everett, and Webster; in Education, 
Horace Mann; in the Ministry, Channing, Parker, Beecher, and a host 
of others.” 

— Geo. F. Hoar, of Mass. Extract from speech in H. of R. at Wash¬ 
ington, on the occasion of the presentation of statxies of John Winthrop 
and Samuel Adams to the U. S., 1876. 

GEORGE F. HOAR’S EPITAPH 

“I have no faith in fatalism, in destiny, in blind force. I believe in 
God, the living God. I believe in the American people, a brave and free 
people, who do not bow the neck or bend the knee to any other, and 
who desire no other to bow the neck or bend the knee to them. I believe 
that a republic is greater than an empire. I believe finally whatever 
clouds may darken the horizon that the world is growing better, that 
today is better than yesterday, and that tomorrow will be better than 
today.” 

— Written hy himself and to be placed on his monument in Concord, 
M ass. 

LAW—THEN AND NOW 

“The old lawyer and the old judge began his education by obtaining, 
as far as might be, a mastery of legal principles. In general his first 
inquiry was, if any legal problems were presented to him, if it were a 
question of common law, ‘what is the general rule?’ If it were the ques¬ 
tion of the construction of a statute, ‘What construction of the statute 
will make of it a just general rule?’ In applying the common law to any 
state of facts he took it for granted that the common law was the per¬ 
fection of reason, and that it contained what the experience of ages had 
found to be the most just and convenient rules of conduct for mankind 
in deahng with each other in matters concerning property, or reputation, 
or hberty, or hfe. When the student, or the counselor at law, or the judge 
had made up his mind on that, he then considered the adjudged cases 
with the view of fortifying his own opinion by their authority. If he 
found them in conflict with that opinion, before yielding to them, he did 
his best to reconcile them with his idea of justice, to limit and restrict 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


339 


them as far as possible and, unless the current of authority were too strong, 
to get them overruled if they were wrong. The study of the law was a 
study of ethics or moral philosophy.” 

— Geo. F. Hoar — Mass., Historical Society Proceedings, Vol. 18, 
p. 159. 

HUMOR 

“Humor is not the proper accompaniment when men are on trial for 
their lives, in framing constitutions, bill of rights, or denouncing great 
crimes, nor is there any record that the Savior, the Apostles, or the 
Prophets, had much humor.”— Geo. F. Hoar—On Chas. Sumner. 

SIDNEY BARTLETT 

“Sidney Bartlett, of the Boston Bar, was a man whose processes of 
reasoning bore about the same relation to those of ordinary lawyers that 
logarithms bear to common arithmetical processes.”— Geo. F. Hoar. 

THE AMERICAN FLAG AWAY PROM HOME 

“I have seen the glories of art and architecture and of river and moun¬ 
tain. I have seen the sunset on Jungfrau and the full moon rise over 
Mount Blanc. But the fairest vision on which these eyes ever rested 
was the flag of my country in a foreign port. Beautiful as a flower 
to those who love it, terrible as a meteor to those who hate it, it is the 
symbol of the power and the glory and the honor of ninety millions of 
Americans.”— Geo. F. Hoar. 

DELIBERATION, WISDOM, CHARACTER 

“Every generation since the dawning of civihzation seems to have 
been gifted with its peculiar capacity. The generation of Homer has left 
nothing behind but a great epic poem, which for thirty centuries remains 
without a rival. Italian art had its brief and brilliant day of glory, 
which has departed and has never returned. The time of Elizabeth was 
the time of dramatic poetry, which has been alike the wonder and the 
despair of all succeeding ages. The generation which accomplished the 
American Revolution had a genius for forming constitutions which no 
generation before or since has been able to equal or to approach. The 
features of the State constitutions framed in that day have been retained 
with little changes in substance, and have been copied since by every 
new state.” 

— Geo. F. Hoar—a man of thought, not of action, an accomplished 
debater, an erudite scholar, a learned jurist, a consummate master 
of his mother tongue. 

WAR WITH SPAIN DEPLORED 

“I confess I do not like to think of the genius of America angry, snarling, 
shouting, screaming, kicking, clawing with her nails. I hke rather to 
think of her in her august and serene beauty, inspired by a sentiment, 
even towards her enemies, not of hate, but of. love, perhaps a little pale 
in the cheeks and a dangerous light in her eyes, but with a smile on her 
face, as sure, as determined, unerring, invincible as was the Archangel 
Michael when he struck down and trampled upon the demon of darkness.” 
— Geo. F. Hoar, 1898, in Congress. 

TO THE VIRGINIA BAR ASS’N. 

“I am not vain enough to take this invitation from the famous bar 
of your Commonwealth as a mere personal compliment. I like better 


340 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


to think of it as a token of the willingness of Virginia to renew the old 
relations of esteem and honor which bound your people to those of 
Massachusetts when the two were the leaders in the struggle for inde¬ 
pendence. There is no more touching story of the magnificence and 
bounty of one people to another than that of Virginia to Massa¬ 
chusetts when the port of Boston was shut by act of Parliament and by 
a hostile English fleet. I dare say generous Virginia had disdained to 
remember the transaction. Massachusetts will never forget it.” 

— Geo. F. Hoar. 

AN OCEAN VOYAGE 

“To a person who can bear an ordinary voyage there is no retreat like 
an ocean steamer. Telephone, telegraph, daily paper, call or visit of 
friend, client, or constituent; daily mail—sometimes itself, to a busy 
public man, enough for a hard day’s work—all these are forgotten. You 
spend your ten days in an infinite quiet like that of heaven. You sit 
in your arm-chair, with the soft sea-breeze on your forehead, as the mighty 
ocean cradle rocks you, and see the lace of an exquisite beauty that no 
Tyrean weaver ever devised, breaking over the blue or purple waves 
with their tints that no Tyrean dye ever matched. Ah! Marconi, Mar¬ 
coni, could not you let us alone, and leave the tired brain of humanity 
one spot where this ‘hodge-podge’ of business and trouble and care could 
not follow us and find us out?” 

— Geo. F. HoaFs Autobiography of Severity Years, Vol. 2, p. 20^. 
CALEB CUSHING 

“General Cushing was a man of great accomplishment, though never 
a great lawyer. He could collect with wonderful industry all the facts 
bearing on any historic question and everything that had been said on 
either side of any question of law. But he never had a gift of cogent 
argument that would convince any judge or jury. He owed his success 
in life largely to the personal favor of men who knew him and were 
charmed by his agreeable quality. He was regarded by the people of 
Massachusetts as a man without moral convictions and as utterly sub¬ 
servient to the slave power. So his appointment to the Supreme Bench 
of Massachusetts by Governor Boutwell was a great shock to the Anti- 
Slavery men and made them believe that it was not safe to put political 
power in Democratic hands. General Cushing vindicated this opinion 
afterward by the letter written when he was Attorney-General in the 
cabinet of President Piprce declaring that the Anti-Slavery movement 
in the North ‘must be crushed out,’ and also by a letter written to Jef¬ 
ferson Davis after the beginning of the Rebellion recommending some 
person to him for some service to the Confederacy. The discovery of 
this letter compelled President Grant who had been induced to nominate 
him for Chief Justice to withdraw the nomination. The other cause 
was the passage of the biU for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale 
of intoxicating liquors, known as the Maine law.” 

— Geo. F. Hoar, 1 Autobiography of Seventy Years, 173-^. 

BEN BUTLER’S FUNERAL 

When Senator Geo. F. Hoar was asked if he was going to attend 
Butler’s funeral, he replied: “No, but I approve of it.” 


E. ROCKWOOD HOAR (1816-1895), Massachusetts 


JAMES FORD RHODES ON E. ROCKWOOD HOAR 

“Another excellent appointment of Grant’s was his Attorney-General, 
E. Rockwood Hoar, who was then a judge of the Supreme Court of 
Massachusetts, Hoar sprang from the ‘oldest and purest English New 
England stock.’ Impressing his Massachusetts companions as a ‘typical 
New Englander, essentially Puritan,’ he seemed to one apart from that 
community a man of broad intelligence and sympathy. It was ‘a sense 
of humor and spirit of kindliness’ that made him a citizen of the world 
and demonstrated to the guest of his home in Concord that ‘the noble 
frugality and quiet dignity of his little town might cradle the widest 
views of life.’ In Washington, during his term of office his manners were 
thought brusque, but in Concord they were always marked by gentle 
considerateness. ‘Emerson loved him,’ and Lowell, in a private letter 
to Nordhoff, paid him this tribute: ‘You cannot set too high a value on 
the character of Judge Hoar. The extraordinary quickness and acuteness, 
the flash of his mind (which I never saw matched but in Dr. Holmes) 
have dazzled and bewildered some people so that they were blind to his 
solid qualities. Moreover, you know there are people who are afraid 
of wit and cannot see wisdom unless in the deliberate movement of thought 
whose every step they can accompany. I have known Mr. Hoar for more 
than thirty years, intimately for nearly twenty, and it is the solidity of 
the man, his courage and his integrity that I value most highly.’ J. D. 
Cox, whose association with him in the Cabinet was the beginning of 
a life-long friendship, wrote that ‘a heartier accord with all that is right 
and true, a warmer sympathy with whatever makes for progress and 
tends to level men upward, was never seen.’ ” 

—6 Jas. Ford Rhodes^ Hist. U. S., 239-40. 

Hoar was judge of the Mass. Supreme Court (1859-69); Attorney 
General of the U. S. under Pres. Grant, (1869-70); drew the Treaty of 
Washington, (1871); was one of the overseers of Harvard University, 
(1867-1887), from which college he graduated, 1835, and its Law School, 
1839.— Author. 


JURY SYSTEM 

“It is a grateful task to bear testimony to the excellent conduct of 
jurors at the old Bailey sessions (Denman sat on the bench of a criminal 
court, before he was made Chief Justice). I don’t remember a single 
conviction that appeared to be unjust; some acquittals have startled 
me; but often very good reasons, which had not occurred to me at the 
trial, have been suggested afterwards, and I have often thought that 
their mistakes might be traced to their feeling too much difference for 
certain vulgar scraps of judicial phraseology, which have come to be 
considered as principles of law.”— Lord John Campbell. 



THOS. HOBBES (1588-1679) 

SOME READ TOO MUCH 

“If I had read as many books as other men, I should have been as 
ignorant as they are.” (A saying of Hobbes.) 

DESIRE 

“Our nature is inseparable from desires, and the very word desire— 
the craving for something not possessed—implies that our present fe¬ 
licity is not complete.”— Thos. Hobbes, 1588-1679, Eng. 

A MASTER OF SYSTEM 

“According to an eminent critic, only Aristotle and Kant were Hobbes’ 
equals in what may be called the genius of system—the logical filiation 
of doctrines having the broadest and more diverging consequences. 
His infiuence is even now predominant in one of the leading schools of 
speculative science, both in England and this country. The modesty 
of Locke is as evident as the haughtiness and dogmatism of Hobbes.” 

—Francis Bowen's Modern Philosophy, 4- 

AS A PHILOSOPHER 

“As a philosopher Hobbes is generally regarded as the father of English 
materialism. Locke was largely infiuenced by him in the development 
of the ‘sensation’ theory of Knowledge. The principles of Thomas Hobbes 
were called ‘Hobbism.’ He considered religion to be a mere engine of 
state, and man by nature altogether a ferocious and selfish being, re¬ 
quiring the strong hand of despotism to keep him in check. It is as a 
political philosopher that Hobbes’ fame is greatest. The object of his 
‘Leviathan’ is to determine the object of Sovereignty. This he finds in 
an orginal social compact, whereby man, weary of the insecurity of the 
state of nature, which is a state of war, agrees to submit to the authority 
of the individual of individuals strong enough to repress anarchy. This 
compact, once made, is permanent, and cannot be annulled at the wish 
of the subjects; and it is the duty of the sovereign to repress all rebellion 
as a crime against society. The sovereign maintains his position by force, 
not by consent. Nevertheless, the citizens are not loser, because any 
government is better than the primitive anarchy.” 

— Jas. E. G. de Montmorency, in the ^World's Great Jurists,' 208. 

THE NATURAL STATE OF MAN 

“The natural state of man is a state of war of all against all; as a proof 
of this, see the Indians and savages in a natural state. Peace is the result 
of science and civilization.” 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Jr. (1841- ) 


A LEGAL DUTY 

“A legal duty so-called is nothing but a prediction that if a man does 
or omits certain things he will be made to suffer in this or that way by 
judgment of the court:—and so of a legal right. * * * The first thing for 
a business like understanding of the matter is to understand its limits, 
and therefore I think it desirable at once to point out and dispel a con¬ 
fusion between morality and law, which sometimes rises to the height of 
conscious theory and more often, and indeed constantly, is making trouble 
in detail without reaching the point of consciousness. We can see very 
plainly that a bad man has as much reason as a good man for wishing 
to avoid an encounter with the public force, and therefore you can see the 
practical importance of the distinction between morality and law. 

“* * * I think that the judges themselves have failed adequately to re¬ 
cognize their duty of weighing considerations of social advantage. Their 
duty is inevitable, and the result of the often proclaimed judicial aversion 
to deal with such considerations is simply to leave the very ground and 
foundation of judgments inarticulate and often unconscious, as I have 
said. When socialism first began to be talked about, the comfortable 
classes of the community were a good deal frightened. I suspect that this 
fear has influenced judicial action both here and in England, yet it is 
certain that it is not a conscious factor in the decisions to which I refer. 
I think that something similar has led people who no longer hope to 
control the legislatures to look to the courts as expounders of the Coo, 
stitutions, and that in some courts new principles have been discov 
ered outside the bodies of those instruments, which may be general' 
ized into acceptance of the economic doctrines which prevailed about fifty- 
years ago, and a wholesale prohibition of what a tribunal of lawyers does 
not think about. I cannot but believe that if the training of lawyers led 
them habitually to consider more definitely and explicitly the social ad¬ 
vantages on which the rule they lay down must be justified, they some¬ 
times would hesitate where now they are confident, and see that really 
they were taldng sides upon debataWe and often burning questions.” 

—Before the Boston University School of Law, given by Mr. Justice 
Holmes in 1897. 

PURSUIT OP THE LAW 

“One of the good things about the law is that it does not pursue money 
directly. When you sell goods the price which you can get and your 
own interests are what you think about in the affair. When you try 
a ca e you think about the ways to win it, and the interests of your client. 
In the long run, this affects one’s whole habit of mind, as anyone will 
notice if he talks much vdth men.”— Justice 0. llh Holmes. 


UNSCHOLARLY LAWYER MAY BE SUCCESSFUL 

“A certain amount of education a man must have who constantly is 
using books. It will save him trouble if he understands an occasional 
scrap of Latin when he comes across it. But a man may sweep juries 
before him, command the attention of judges, counsel sagely in great 
affairs, or be a leader in the Senate of the country with nothing of the 
scholarly about him.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. {Mass.), 184L 


344 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Graduated from Harvard, at 25, admitted to Suffolk Bar, at 26; 
taught constitutional law at Harvard, at 29 and 30; appointed to Supreme 
Court of Mass, at 41, in 1882, retiring in 1902 to take his place as an Asso¬ 
ciate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, which position he still occupies. 
— Author. 


RECEIVER 

“A receiver is a gun that is a good deal easier to fire off than it is to 
control after it is fired.”— 0. W. Holmes, Jr. 


ROBERT EMMET 

“His fame does not rest, like the common reputations of great men, 
upon the achievements of a long career, for history has only half saved 
from waste of time, events in which he had a share. It rests upon the 
fact that in anxious and disturbed times, when the hearts of his country¬ 
men had sunk within them, this fearless man, bearing within his breast 
the injuries of an afflicted nation, was ready with willing sacrifice to lay 
down his life for the emancipation of his country. * * * This century 

now coming to an end, early reversed the judgment of the King’s Commis¬ 
sion which doomed Robert Emmet to death. About his times have gather¬ 
ed the masters of song and fable and the cheap framework of useless 
lumber upon which he died has become the tribute from which he speaks 
today in the ears of all the world. Nor is it strange that men should 
listen now to words which were heard with angry impatience by his 
accusers, for the century to which he speaks has begun to understand the 
cause of Ireland in equity. It has learned to look upon the grim regime of 
anarchy plus the constable (if you will permit the phrase from old Carlyle) 
and to see the fallen and prostrate figure of Justice. The nineteenth 
century knows that there are not laws in all the statute-books of men 
effectually to put to confusion the eternal law of Right. It makes no 
apology for the blunders and crimes which have attended the exercise 
of English authority in Ireland, but in good faith has begun to offer visible 
redress for the grievances of the unhappy island. It knows that the record 
of the government of Ireland is against the real spirit of English liberty. 
It remembers that the most splendid tribute ever paid to the English 
Constitution was paid by John Philpot Curran in defence of an Irishman 
accused of high treason in 1784. It believes that the common law, 
broadened by the infiuence of a generous century, is adequate to secure 
the rights of men in every quarter of the British Empire.” 

—Jonathan P. Dolliver (1858-1910), of Iowa, at Cooper Union, 

N. Y., March 3, 1892. 



JOHN HOLT (1642-1710) England 

SOMEWHAT OF HOLT’S CAREER 

John Holt was born at Thame, Oxfordshire, England, Dec. 30, 1642; 
died March 5, 1710; son of a barrister and sergeant-at-law; educated at 
grarnmar school and at Oxford, which he left without a degree; where 
tradition says his friends and companions were a very dissipated set, 
one of which lived to be tried for a felony, and that upon Holt’s visiting 
him in jail, and asking about his old companions, was told by the felon 
that all had been hanged but himself and his lordship. Another story 
is, that finding himself in the vicinity of Oxford, without money, he 
procured a week’s lodging at an inn, by pretending to charm away the 
ague from the landlady’s daughter, by binding round her arm a scrap 
of parchment, on which he had scrawled Greek letters to look like a spell, 
and that in after years this scrap of writing was put in as the principal 
evidence against an old woman indicted before him of sorcery, where¬ 
upon Holt told the jury the story, and directed an acquittal. 

He was called to the bar at 21, and at 31 figured with some frequency 
in the reports; at 37 defended the Earl of Danby in his impeachment; 
also Lords Powis and Arundel, two of the five popish lords were im¬ 
peached the same year. He appeared in various cases for the Crown in 
popish plots, and election riots; was counsel for Lord Russell for 
complicity in the Rye House plot on 1683; was for the East India Co. 
in its case against Sandys for infringement of their monopoly; acted 
privately as counsel for Lord Clarendon. 

He was appointed Chief Justice of the king’s bench in 1689, at 47 
years of age, which office he held till death, for over twenty years. He 
was a sworn foe to prosecutions for witchcraft, as suspicious of their 
reality as Lord Hale was credulous; settled the law of bailments in Coggs 
V. Bernard, liis opinion therein being followed by the text-writers since, 
beginning with Sir William Jones; drafted, or suggested the act of parlia¬ 
ment, placing promissory notes upon the same footing as bills of exchange, 
in point of negotiability, and by his decision did much to settle the law 
relating to these securities. 

In his judgment in the indictment of Charles Knollys, who claimed to 
be the Earl of Banbury, for murder, he became involved in a contest 
with the House of Lords, in which that branch of parliament threatened 
to imprison him for contempt. But he maintained the independence 
of the judicial over the legislative branch of the government, and the 
matter was dropped. 

In Ashby v. Aylesbury, he maintained that a voter when deprived 
of his right to cast his vote had a remedy against whomsoever deprived 
him of that right; that it was a wrong, and every wrong had a remedy. 
In this case he aroused the wrath of the House of Commons, as they 
interfered to protect the returning officer, Alyesbury, who failed to record 
the vote of White. There is a mythical story that Holt defied the Speaker 
of the House, who with his numerous' train of attendants threatened to 
commit the Judge, and Holt is said to have replied to the Speaker and 
his retinue, “Begone, or I will forthwith commit you, had you all the 
House of Commons in your belly .”—The Author. 

LORD HOLT UPON THE RIGHT TO VOTE 

“Ashby had a right to give his vote; and if he was obstructed in the 
enjoyment or exercise of that right, he might legally bring an action against 
the disturber. If the plaintiff has a right, he must of necessity have a 


346 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


means to vindicate and maintain it; and, indeed, it is a vain thing to 
imagine a right without a remedy; for want of right and want of remedy 
are reciprocal. It is no objection to say that it will occasion multiplicity 
of actions; for if men will multiply injuries, actions must be multiplied 
too; for every man that is injured ought to have his recompense. And, 
if public officers will infringe men’s rights, they ought to pay greater 
damages than other men, to deter and hinder other officers from the like 
offences. To allow this action will make public officers more careful to 
observe the constitutions of cities and boroughs, and not to be so partial 
as they commonly are in all elections, which is, indeed, a great and growing 
mischief, and tends to the prejudice of the peace of the nation. A right 
that a man has to give his vote to the election of a person to represent 
liim in parliament, there to concern himself to the making of laws which 
are to bind his liberty and property, is a most transcendent thing, and 
of a high nature, and the law takes notice of it as such divers statutes. 
'The right of vote is a right in the plaintiff by the common law, and con¬ 
sequently, he shall maintain an action for the obstruction of it.” 

The majority of the Bench having pronounced a different opinion, 
judgment was given for the defendant; but on Jan. 14, 1703, this judgment 
was reversed on appeal in the House of Peers, by fifty lords against 
sixteen, and Holt was sustained, he declaring, “It is a right, denying his 
English right; and, if this action is not allowed, a man may forever be 
deprived of it. It is a great privilege to choose such persons as are 
to bind a man’s life and property by the laws they make.” 

Here, how^ever, the affairs of the electors and the returning officers 
did not end. In Dec., 1704, John Paty and four others, who had also 
prosecuted an action at common law against the constables of Ayles¬ 
bury, were committed to Newgate by a warrant from the Speaker for 
a breach of the privilege of the House. Their counsel having moved 
for an habeas, corpus, they were brought up to the Court of Queen’s 
Bench, when three of the Judges were for remanding them to prison, 
but Holt gave his opinion, in the clearest and strongest manner, that they 
ought to be discharged, saying: 

“I am very sorry, I am forced to differ from my brethren, but, what¬ 
ever inconveniences or dangers I may incur, I think myseff obliged 
to act according to my conscience. I must declare it is my opinion, 
that the prisioner ought to be discharged, because it is an illegal com¬ 
mitment; and Magna Charta says,‘Quod Nemo imprisonetui nisiper legem 
terra,’ and, if prosecuting a legal action in a legal method can justify 
a commitment then no Englishman’s freedom is safe. It is by the law 
of the land, that the House of Commons have their being, therefore it 
can never be in the power of the Commons to control law. It is by 
Magna Charta that the liberty of an Englishman is preserved; and with¬ 
out destroying the constitution of England, the liberty of an Englishman 
cannot be taken from him but for a legal cause. It is pretended that 
acting legally is a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons, 
and that we are not judges of it. This is impossible; when the law, by 
which the House of Commons sits, justifies the prosecution of this action; 
and it is not in the power of the House of Commons to supersede that which 
gives them their essence.” 

“If we can discharge a person committed per mandalum regis, a fort¬ 
iori, I think we can discharge from a commitment of the House of Com¬ 
mons. The House of Commons, it is true, have a power over their own 
members, and may commit them; but to say, that their commitment 
of any other person (though never so unlawful) is unexaminable, will 
tend to make Englishmen slaves, which, while I sit here, I can never 
consent to. I hope never to be overawed from doing justice, and I think 
we sit here to administer equal justice to all her Majesty’s subjects; 
and, therefore, it is my judgment, that these prisoners ought to be dis¬ 
charged.” 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


347 


REFUSED THE CHANCELLORSHIP 

Holt refused the chancellorship from King William in these words: 

“I feel highly honored by your Majesty’s gracious offer; but all the 
time I was at the bar, I never had more than one ease in chancery, and 
that I lost, so that I cannot think myself qualified for so great a trust.” 

—2 CamphelVs 'Lives of the Chief Justices,' 39. 

CAMPBELL’S ESTIMATE OF HOLT 

“Generally speaking. Holt is to be considered a consummate jurist; 
above all prejudices; misled by no predilection; seeing what the law 
ought to be; giving precedent its just weight, and no more; able to adapt 
established principles to the new exigencies of social life; and making 
us prefer judge-made law to the crude enactments of the legislatures.” 

—3 CamphelVs ^ Lives of the Chief Justices,^ 56. 

BISHOP BURNET ON HOLT 

“Holt was a young man for so high a post (Chief Justice, when 26 
years of age), and yet he maintained it all his time with a high reputation 
for capacity, integrity, courage, and great dispatch; so that since the 
Lord Chief Justice Hale’s time that bench had not been so well filled 
as it was by him.”— 5 'The British Plutarch,' j^8-63. 

(For Samuel Shellabarger’s estimate, see ‘Shellabarger).’ 


SOME OF CARTER’S GREAT CASES 

He acted as counsel in a great many important cases in the courts of 
the State of New York, and the United States Supreme Court, among 
which may be mentioned the Singer, Tilden, Hamersley and Fairweather 
will cases, each of which involved the disposition of great fortunes; 
the Tweed and Jumel cases; Ping v. United States (130 U. S., 581), in 
which the treaty with China—the Chinese Exclusion Act—was involved; 
Counselman v. Hitchcock (142 U. S., 547), involving the constitutional 
right of a witness to decline to give incriminating testimony; Ex Parte 
Rapier and Dupre (143 U. S., 110), involving the constitutionality of 
the legislation prohibiting the use of the mails for the circulation of 
lottery advertisements; Cameron v. United States (148 U. S., 301), 
involving land titles under Mexican grants, and the operation of Congress¬ 
ional legislation; Constable v. The National Steamship Co. (154 U. S., 
51), concerning respective rights of parties to a bill of lading, under some¬ 
what extraordinary conditions; Hilton v. Guyot (159 U. S., 113), which 
involved the effect of a foreign judgment and, incidentally, international 
law, foreign law and reciprocity; the Bate Refrigerating Co. v. Sulz¬ 
berger (157 U. S., 1), which determined the question of the life of a 
valuable patent as affected by the termination of a foreign patent, and 
the meaning of the Act of Congress with reference thereto; the Income 
Tax Cases (157 U. S., 429 and 158 U. S., 601); United States v. Trans- 
Missouri Freight Ass’n. (166 U. S., 290); United States v. Joint Traffic 
Ass’n. (171 U. S., 505), involving the legality of traffic and rate agree¬ 
ments between railroads, and the application of the Inter-State Commerce 
laws of Congress; Smyth v. Ames (169 U. S., 466), which defined, limited 
and applied the power of a State to control railroad rates; the North 
American Commercial Co. v. United States (171 U. S., 110), involving 
under government lease of the seal fisheries; and as a culmination of his 
career, the Bering Sea Arbitration, before an International Court, at 
Paris, in 1883.—8 Great American Lawyers, 23-25. 



ALBERT H. HORTON (1837-1902), Kansas 

IMPORTANCE OF THE LAW 

“It is the law that protects your crops in the fields; that guards your 
cattle feeding upon the hills and in the meadows; that secures the shop, 
the store and the bank from midnight spoliation; that renders safe the 
home, the family and all you value as near and dear to you. It is the law 
that protects the citizens from assault, that guards your treasures from 
the thief and the robber, that secures you all your rights of person and 
property, and throws around all of us its ample and protecting shield. 
It protects you as you meet, in absolute peace, and permits you to consult 
together over matters of supreme importance to yourselves and individ¬ 
uals, to your country and state, without disturbance from the turbulent, 
or violence from the lawless. It is, in fact, our sentry by day and our 
watch by night. Without law, anarchy and confusion would reign 
supreme. Might would be the only controlling power, and rights of person 
and property would be respected only so long as they had immediate 
force at hand to command protection. Disobedience to law tends first 
to anarchy and then to tyranny, as any government is better than none 
at 2 u \\.”—1881. 


HENRY WATERSON ON LAMAR 

“Lamar was very many-sided and accomplished, the most interesting 
and lovable of men, very much at home in European Courts, especially 
in that of England. He, was a man among brainy men and a lion among 
clever women. * * ♦ j rather think that Lamar was the biggest 

brained of all the men I have met in Washington. He possessed the 
courage of his convictions. A doctrainaire—there was nothing of the 
typical doctrainaire, or theorist about him. He really believed that 
cotton was king, and would compel England to espouse the cause of 
the South .”—2 Henry Waterson’s Autobiography, 18-21. 

Of his oratory, L. F. Youmans said: “The torch in his hand burned 
with withering power, and he wielded it without fear of man.” 



TEMPLE HOUSTON, Oklahoma 


“TELL HER TO GO IN PEACE” 

“Gentlemen, you heard with what cold cruelty the prosecution referred 
to the sins of this woman, as if her condition was of her own preference. 
The evidence has painted you a picture of her life and surroundings. 
Do you think they were of her own choosing? Do you think that she 
willingly embraced a life so revolting and horrible ? Ah, no! Gentlerpen, 
one of our sex was the author of her ruin, more to blame than she; then 
let us judge her gently. What could be more pathetic than the spectacle 
she presents ? An immortal soul in ruins! Where the star of purity once 
glittered on her girlish brow, burning shame has set its seal forever! 
And only a moment ago they reproached her for the depths to which she 
had sunk, the company she kept, the life she led. Now, what else is left 
for her? Where can she go and her sin not pursue her? Gentlemen, the 
very promises of God are denied her. He said; ‘Come unto me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ She has indeed 
labored and is heavy laden, but if at this instant she were to kneel down 
before us all and confess her Redeemer and beseech His tender mercies, 
where is the church that would receive her? And even if they accepted 
her, when she passed the portals to worship and to calm her rest, scorn 
and mockery would greet her and those she met would gather around 
them their skirts the more closely to avoid the pollution of her touch. 
Would you tell me a single employment where she can realize, ‘Give us 
this day our daily bread?’ Our sex wrecked her once pure life. Her 
own sex shrinks from her as it would the pestilence. Society has reared 
its relentless walls against her and only in the friendly shelter of the grave 
can her betrayed and broken heart ever find the Redeemer’s promised 
rest. They told you of her assumed names, as fleeting as the shadows 
on the walls, of her sins, her habits, but they never told you of her sorrows, 
and who shall tell what her heart, sinful though it may be, now feels, 
when the remembered voices of mother and sisters, whom she must 
see no more on this earth, fall again like music on her erring soul and she 
prays God that she could only return and must not—no, not in this life, 
for the seducer has destroyed her soul? 

“You know the story of the prodigal son, but he was a son. He was 
one of us, like her destroyer, but for the prodigal daughter there is no 
return. Were she with her wasted form and bleeding feet to drag her¬ 
self back to her girlhood home, she, the fallen and the lost, what would 
be her welcome? Oh, consider this when you come to decide her guilt, 
for she is before us and we must judge her. They sneer and scoff at her. 
One should respect her grief and I tell you that there reigns over her 
penitent and chastened spirit a desolation now that none, no, none but 
the Searcher of all Hearts can ever know. 

“They wish to fine this woman and make her leave. They wish to 
wring from the wages of her shame the price of this meditated injustice; 
to take from her the little money she might have, and God knows, gentle¬ 
men, it came hard enough. The old Jewish law told you that the price 
of a dog nor the hire of such as she should not come within the house of 
the Lord, and I say unto you that our justice, fitly symbolized by woman’s 
form, does not ask that you add aught to the woes of this unhappy one, 
who only asks at your hands the pitiful privilege of being left alone. 

“The Master while on earth, while He spake in wrath and rebuke to 
the kings and rulers, never reproached one of these. One He forgave, 
another He acquitted. You remember both, and now, looking upon 
this friendless outcast, if any of us can say unto her, ‘I am holier than 


350 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


thou,’ in the respect which she is charged with sinning, who is he? The 
Jews who brought the woman before the Savior have been held up to 
the execration of the world for two thousand years. I always respected 
them. A man who will yield to the reproaches of his conscience as they 
did has the element of good in him, but the modern hypocrite has no 
such compunctions. If the prosecutors of this woman whom you are 
trying had brought her before the Savior they would have accepted his 
challenge and each one gathered a rock and stoned her in the twinkling 
of an eye. 

“No, gentlemen, do as your Master did twice, under the very circum¬ 
stances that surround you. ‘Tell her to go in peace.’ ” 

Temple Houston, who volunteered to defend this woman outcast (the 
technical guilt of whom has been proven), yet the jury returned a verdict 
of acquittal the moment he had finished speaking. The case was tried in 
Woodward, Okla., where Houston lived. He was a son of Col. Sam 
Houston of Texas fame.— Author. 


BOB TOOMBS, ALEX. STEPHENS AND PETER 

Alex. H. Stephens, the old vice-president of the confederacy, used to 
tell this story, how Peter Bennett, an old Georgia farmer, beat Bob 
Toombs and Dr. Royston in a law case; and he used to tell it with all the 
mimicry of Dan Satchett and the elegance of Sam Ward. Dr. Royston 
sued farmer Bennett for his bill for medical services. “I told Bennett,” 
said Stephens, “that he could make no defense, that Bob Toombs, a 
promising young lawyer, was on the other side and he surely would beat 
him.” 

“Never mind,” said Bennett. “I want you to speak to the case.” 

“No, Bennett,” I said, “there’s no use. If there is any speaking on 
this case you’ll have to do the talking*” 

“Very well. I’ll do it then,” said Peter, “if you’ll hold off Bob Toombs.” 

I told Bennett I’d take care of Toombs, and was utterly surprised when 
Peter started off his speech to the jimy: 

“Gentlemen of the jury, I ain’t no lawyer and no doctor, and you 
ain’t nuther, and if we farmers don’t stick together these here doctors 
and lawyers will get the advantage of us. I ain’t no objections to lawyers 
and doctors in their place, and some is clever men, but they ain’t farmers, 
gentlemen of the jury. Now this Dr. Royston was a new doctor, and I 
sent for him to come and doctor my wife’s sore leg. And he did, and put 
some salve truck on it, and some rags, but it never done it a bit of good, 
gentlemen of the jury. I don’t believe he’s no doctor, no way. T&re’s 
doctors as I know is doctors, sure enough, but this ain’t no doctor at all.” 

The farmer was making headway with the jury, when Dr. Royston 
said, “Here is my diploma.” 

“His diploma,” said Bennett, with great contempt, “that ain’t nothin’, 
for no piece of paper ever made a doctor yet.” 

“Ask my patients,” yelled now the thoroughly enraged physician. 

“Ask your patients,” slowly repeated Bennett, and then deliberating; 
‘ ‘ask your patients ? Why, they are all dead. ’ ’ Then he rapidly enumerat¬ 
ed case after case—most of them among the negro servants and in the 
neighborhood—of such of the doctor’s patients who had succumbed to 
his pills and powders, and continued: “Ask your patients! Why, I 
should have to hunt them in the lonely graveyards and rap on the silent 
tomb to get answer from the dead. You know they can’t say nothing 
in this case, for you’ve killed them all.” 

Loud was the applause, and farmer Bennett won his case. 



RICHARD D. HUBBARD, Connecticut 

WORK AND FAME OF LAWYER 

“To my thinking, the most rigorous brain work of the world is done 
in the ranks of our profession. And then our work concerns the highest 
of all temporal interests, property, reputation, the peace of families, 
liberty, life even, the foundations of society, the jurisprudence of the 
world, and as a recent event has shown, the arbitrations and peace of 
nations. The world accepts the work, but forgets the workers. The 
waste hours of Lord Bacon and Sergeant Talfourd were devoted to letters, 
and each is infinitely better remembered for his mere literary diversions 
than for his whole long and laborious professional life-work. The victory 
gained by the counsel of the seven bishops was worth infinitely more 
to the people of England than all the triumphs of the Crimean war. 
But one Lord Cardigan led a foolishly brilliant charge against a Russian 
battery at Balaklava, and became immortal. Who led the great charge 
of the seven great confessors of the English church against the English 
crown.at Westminster Hall? You must go to your books to answer. 
They were not on horse back. They wore gowns instead of epaulettes. 
The truth is, we are like the little insects that in the unseen depths of 
the ocean lay the coral foundations of uprising islands. In the end come 
the solid land, the olive and the vine, the habitations of man, the arts 
and industries of life, the havens of the sea and ships riding at anchor. 
But the busy toilers which laid the beams of a continent in a dreary waste 
are entombed in their work and forgotten in their tombs.” 

—Richard D. Hubbard. Address on the. death of Wm. Uungerford 
of the Hartford Bar, Jan., 1873. 


WEBSTER’S PERORATION IN REPLY TO HAYNE (As Written) 

“When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in 
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored frag¬ 
ments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, bel- 
hgerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in frater¬ 
nal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the 
gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the 
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their 
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, 
bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as ‘What is all 
this worth?’ nor those other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first 
and Union afterwards;’ but everywhere, spread all over in characters of 
living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and 
over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other 
sentiment, dear to every true American heart; ‘Liberty and Union, now 
and forever, one and inseperablei’ ” 

—Reply to Hayne in 1830, in U. S. Senate. 

Webster said to Hiram Ketcham, of the “Reply to Hayne:” “In one 
sense I had no preparation whatever, but in another sense I was fully 
prepared. I did not know what words I should use when I rose to my 
feet, nor the order of argument in which I should proceed. These came 
to me under the excitement of debate. But I understood the subject as 
well as I was capable of understanding it. I had studied it; I had often 
urged similar arguments before other tribunals, and in this sense of the 
term T was thoroughly prepared.”— The Author. 



THOMAS H. HUBBARD (1838-1915), Maine 

A LAWSUIT—THE CLIENT’S CONTROVERSY 

“The controversy, with all its attendent exasperations, is the clients’ 
controversy. Its aspirations, its irritations, its impulses, its interests 
are not the lawyer’s, save as he receives them in bulk, as a common carrier 
receives all goods that are offered; if, as the servant of the client, he 
carries them through all the portals and into the temple of justice, then 
he gives to his cases the elements that retard justice and bring the practice 
of the law into disrepute. He obtrudes upon the court the passion, the 
prejudice, the unreason of the client. These should be left outside the 
court-house door. The controversy that crosses the threshold should 
be a controversy sifted by the intelligence and shaped by the conscience 
of the lawyer. It should be the essence of honest difference in the asser¬ 
tion of rights, not the turmoil of personal dispute.”— In Lecture before 
students of the Law Dept., Union University, 1903. 

(See under “Erskine” and “Brougham,” their theory of defending a 
bad cause). 

Mr. Hubbard practiced law in N. Y. from 1865 to 1894, when he retired 
to devote himself to railroad, banking and other business enterprises 
with which he was officially connected.— Author. 


ELIHU ROOT’S EXPERIENCE WITH CREEK INDIANS 

“One of the best instances of Mr. Root’s readiness in repartee,” says 
Secretary Hitchcock, “was told me by Root’s private secretary. It 
happened when a delegation of Creek Indians had come east to see me on 
some matters of importance to them; but being misdirected they got by 
mistake into the War Department. Of course their interpreter merely 
asked for the Secretary, and the redmen were ushered into Mr. Root’s 
office. 

“What was said and done for the first few minutes must have been 
funny, for the conversation was all at cross-purposes; but at last something 
was dropped which showed what the visitors wanted, when quick as a 
flash Root said: 

“ ‘Oh, I see! Gentlemen, you have come to the wrong man. I have 
jurisdiction over navigable rivers, but not over Creeks,’ and he bowed 
them out.” 



CHAS. E. HUGHES (1862- ), New York 


AUTONOMY OF THE STATES 

“If we did not have States, we should speedily have to create them. 
We now have them, with the advantages of historic background, and in 
mastering the serious questions of local administration we at least have 
the advantage of ineradicable sentiment and cherished traditions. And 
we may well congratulate ourselves that the circumstances of the forma¬ 
tion of a more perfect Union have given us neither a confederation of 
States nor a single centralized government, but a nation—and yet a union 
of States, each autonomous in its local concerns. To preserve the essen¬ 
tial elements of this system—without allowing State action to throw it 
out of gear the requisite machinery for unity of control in national con¬ 
cerns demands the most intelligent appreciation of all the facts of our 
interrelated affairs and far more careful efforts in co-operation than we 
have hitherto put forth.” 

—Justice Chas. E. Hughes, from speech before the N. Y. State Bar 

Ass’n., Jan. 14 ^, 1916. 

A JUDGE AND POLITICS 

“A judge of the Supreme Court should not be available altho he may 
be nominally ehgible for elective office. The moment he assumes the 
judicial office he ceases to be a partisan and knows, or should know, no 
partisan obligation. The moment he accepts a party nomination one 
or more things happen and happen explicitly. First, a political party 
may undertake to capitalize judicial decisions and its candidates, than 
which nothing could be more violative of the spirit of the judicial institu¬ 
tion. His decision would, moreover, become subject to the partisan 
and passionate review of partisan strife. Worst of all, it is not inconceiv¬ 
able that, if men are to step from the bench to elective office, decisions 
may ultimately be rendered with a view to the contingency of such 
public and necessarily partisan review. More important than the pres¬ 
ent pohtical contest, however large it looms at present, is the perpetuating 
of the organic institutions of the Republic.” 

Replying to Rabbi Wise’s query that a crisis might make it necessary 
for Justice Hughes to accept the nomination for President, the Justice 
replied: 

“I hope that as a justice of the Supreme Court, I am rendering public 
service and may continue to do so for some years, but the Supreme 
Court must not be dragged into politics and no man is as essential to 
his country’s well-being as is the unstained dignity of the courts.” 

— Chas. E. Hughes. 

THE BAR—AN INDEX OF PUBLIC VIRTUE 

“The sentiment of the bar is a fair index of public virtue. If its stand¬ 
ards are corrupted, the vital forces of society cannot fail to be enfeebled. 
With a sound, courageous, and independent bar, a foe of demagogy 
but a friend to rational improvement, vindicating its expert leadership by 
intelligent conception of the interests of the community, and by its zeal 
for the better administration of justice which is its especial care, de¬ 
mocracy will not essay its tasks in vain.” 

— Before N. Y. Bar Ass'n., Jan. H, 1916. 


354 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


DEMOCRATIC PLATFORMS 

“If you go through the Democratic platforms for the last 50 years, 
you will feel as though you were walking through a cemetery consecrated 
to departed Constitutional theories.” 

POWER 

“I do not covet power; power means responsibility. I do covet honors; 
I have enjoyed great honors. I simply desire to serve the American 
people.”— Said lohen candidate for the Presidency, 1916. 

EXPERT AGENTS OF DEMOCRACY 

“A tendency opposed to a proper conception of the function of the 
courts is that which denies to judges the authority which would seem 
to be needed for the efficient discharge of judicial duty. Thus in some 
jurisdictions the freedom of the judge in instructing the jury is very 
considerably curtailed in a manner which betrays a regrettable distrust. 
This of course, carries the lesson of the extreme importance of such 
conduct on the part of our judges as will commend their office to the 
community they serve. But I venture to say that no intelligent citizen 
has ever taken part as a juryman in a trial, over which presided a thor¬ 
oughly competent judge, who swiftly, fairly, and firmly applied the law, 
extricating the essential merits of the controversy from the confusing 
details of testimony and argument, without profound respect for the 
expert knowledge, and trained capacity which successfully meets a test 
so severe. There can be no respect for the law, without competent 
administration, and there can be no competent administration without 
adequate power. We shall never rise to our opportunities in this country 
and secure a proper discharge of the public business until we get over 
our dislike of experts; and the difficulties in the way of needed improve¬ 
ments in the administration of justice will not be overcome by tying 
the hands of the most competent to deal with them.” 

— From. Address before N. Y. Bar Ass^n., 1916. 

OFFICIAL RESPONSIBILITY 

“To put upon the courts the burden of considering the details of admin¬ 
istrative problems would be to overwhelm them; but for the courts to 
revise and rescind administrative agencies, but also to seriously impair 
the confidence reposed in judicial tribunals. It cannot be too strongly 
insisted that if we are to have these important administrative instru¬ 
mentalities properly perform their duty, they should stand on their own 
footing, and that the public should realize that their safeguard is not in 
injecting the courts into the work of administration, to the confusion 
of both, but in maintaining an enlightened policy and in insisting upon 
proper standards of official conduct. The courts cannot be substituted 
for administrative agencies; nor, as I believe, is it to the ultimate advan¬ 
tage of the community to divide between them the responsibility for 
purely administrative action. This is not to say that the courts do not 
have a very important function in connection with the work of admin¬ 
istrative commissions. These bodies exercise prescribed powers, and the 
limits of these powers, as well as constitutional restrictions, must be 
defended and maintained by judicial tribunals. There is thus interposed 
one of the most important safeguards of the community against all 
efforts on the part of administrative agents to draw to themselves powers 
not conferred, and on the other hand, the appropriate demand, intelli¬ 
gently enforced for the proper execution of the law, does not in any way 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


355 


sacrifice administrative efficiency. Rather it tends to conserve such 
efficiency by avoiding the reactions which inevitably follow abuses of 
authority .”—From Address before N. Y. Bar Assort., 1916. 

FEDERAL COURT CAN REVIEW STATE COURT, AS TO ITS 
FACTS, WHEN WRONG 

The argument of the appellee, Frank vs. Mangum, in habeas corpus, 
coming up from the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of 
Georgia, in substance is that the trial was in a court of competent juris¬ 
diction, and it retains jurisdiction, although in fact, it was dominated 
by a mob, and that the rulings of the State Court as to the fact of such 
domination cannot be reviewed. This was the majority opinion. The 
dissenting opinion in part is here set forth, rendered by Justices Holmes 
and Hughes: 

“But the argument seems to us conclusive. Whatever disagreement 
there may be as to the scope of the phrase ‘due process of law,’ there 
can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair 
trial, with opportunity to be heard. Mob law does not become due 
process of law by securing assent of a terrorized jury. We are not speak¬ 
ing of mere disorder, or mere irregularities in procedure, but a case 
where the processes of justice are actually subverted. In such a case, 
the Federal Court has jurisdiction to issue the writ (habeas corpus). 
The fact that the State Court still has its general jurisdiction, and is 
otherwise a competent court does not make it impossible to find that 
a jury has been subjected to intimidation in a particular case. The loss 
of jurisdiction is not general but particular, and proceeds from the control 
of a hostile influence. When such a case is presented, it cannot be said, 
that the State Court decision makes the matter res adjudicafa. * * * 

To put an extreme case and show what we mean, if the trial and the 
later hearing before the Supreme Court had taken place in the presence of 
an armed force known to be ready to shoot if the result was not one 
desired, we do not suppose that this Court would allow itself to be 
silenced by the suggestion that the record showed no flaw. To go one 
step further, suppose that the trial had taken place under such intimida¬ 
tion and that the Supreme Court of the State on writ of error had discover¬ 
ed no error in the record, we still imagine that this Court would find a 
sufficient one outside of the record, and that it would not be disturbed 
in its conclusion by anything that the Supreme Court of the State might 
have said. We, therefore, lay the suggestion that the Supreme Court 
of the State has disposed of the present question of the appellant’s 
(Frank’s) right to be present. If the petition discloses facts that amount 
to a loss of jurisdiction in the trial Court, jurisdiction could not be restored 
by any decision above. And, notwithstanding, the principle of comity 
and convenience (for in our opinion, it is nothing more, U. S. vs. Sing Tuck, 
194 U. S., 161-8), that calls for a resort to the local appellate tribunal 
before coming to the Court of the U. S. for a wiit of habeas corpus, 
when as here, that resort has been had in vain, the power to secure 
fundamental rights that had existed at every stage becomes a duty and 
must be set forth. 

“The single question in our minds is, whether a petition alleging that 
a fair trial took place in the midst of a mob, savagely and manifestly 
intent on a single result, is shown on its face unwarranted by the specifi¬ 
cations, which may be presumed to set forth the strongest indications 
of the fact at the petitioner’s command. This is not a matter of polite 
presumptions; we must look facts in the face. Any judge who has sat 
with juries knows that, in spite of forms, they are extremely likely to 
be impregnated bj^ the environing atmosphere. And when we find 
the judgment of the expert on the spot, of the judge whose business it 
was to preserve, not only form but substance, to have been that, if one 


356 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


juryman yielded to the reasonable doubt of a most anxious deliberation, 
neither prisoner nor counsel would be safe from the rage of the crowd, 
we think the presumption overwhelming that the jury responded to the 
passions of the mob. Of course we are speaking only of the case made by 
the petition, and whether it ought to be heard. Upon allegations of this 
gravity, in our opinion, it ought to be heard, whatever the decision of the 
State Court may have been, and it did not need to set forth contradictory 
evidence, or matter of rebuttal, or to explain why the motions for a new 
trial and to set aside the verdict, were overruled by the State Court. 

“There is no reason to fear an impairment of the authority of the State 
to punish the guilty. We do not think it impracticable in any part of this 
country to have trials from outside control. But to maintain this im¬ 
munity it may be necessary that the supremacy of the law and the Federal 
Constitution should be vindicated in a case like this. It may be that on 
a hearing, a different complexion would be given to the judge’s alleged 
facts to be true, we are of opinion that if they were before the Supreme 
Court it sanctioned a situation upon which the Courts of the U. S. should 
act, if for any reason they were not before the Supreme Court, it is our 
duty to act upon them now, and to declare lynch law as little valid when 
practiced by a regularly drawn jury, as when administered by one elected 
by a mob, intent on death.” 

—Justice Hughes's dissenting opinion in Frank vs. Magnum, 237 
U. S. Rep., 309. 

The majority Court upheld the refusal of a writ of habeas corpus, 
brought by Frank, found guilty of murder in the State Courts, and the 
U. S. District Court, for the Northern District of Georgia, refused to 
hear and try the wit of habeas corpus, made in behalf of Leo M. Frank, 
a former resident of N. Y. City, convicted in the Georgia State Courts 
of the murder of a girl of tender years, employed in an Atlanta pencil 
factory, of which he was superintendent. 

WIFE, UNDER MARRIED WOMAN ACT, CAN SUE HER HUS¬ 
BAND IN TORT, DISSENTING OPINION 

Justice Hughes concurred with Justices Harlan and Holmes, in a 
dissenting opinion to the effect that a married woman could sue her hus¬ 
band in damages for an assault and battery committed by him against 
her. This was whether the District of Columbia, under a statute, passed 
by Congress, in 1901, empowering a married woman, not only to sue 
others in her own right for redress of wrongs done her person, or her 
property, but also to maintain an action against the man to whom she 
was still joined in marital bond, to recover damages for an assault and 
battery committed by him against her. She charged that she had been 
brutally beaten on seven different days, separated in point of time. On 
four of these occasions, she said she was enciente, and that her husband 
knew it when he added force to wrath against her. She asked $70,000 
damages; sued in her own name and in her own right. The D. C. Com'ts 
ruled that she could not sue at all, and her attorneys carried the matter 
to the Supreme Court, the Court of final appeal from the District of 
Columbia, and Justice Hughes felt compelled to register his earnest 
dissent. The statute is as follows: 

“Married women shall have the power to engage in any business, to 
contract, whether engaged in business or not, and to sue separately 
upon this contract, and also to sue separately for the recovery, security 
or protection of their property, and for torts committed against them, 
as fully and freely as if they were unmarried.” 

The dissenting opinion, read by Justice Harlan, in part is as follows, 
was concurred in by Justices Hughes and Holmes: 

“In my opinion these statutory provisions, properly construed, embrace 
such a case as the present one. If the words used by Congress lead to 
such a result, and if, as suggested, that result be undesirable on grounds 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


357 


of public policy, it is not within the functions of the Court to ward off 
the dangers feared, or the e\dls threatened simply by a judicial construc¬ 
tion that will defeat the plainly expressed will of the legislative depart¬ 
ment. With the mere policy, expediency, or justice of legislation, the 
courts in our system of government have no rightful concern. Their 
duty is only to declare what the law is, not what, in their judgment, 
it ought to be, leaving the responsibility for legislation where it exclu¬ 
sively belongs, that is, with the legislative department, so long as it 
keeps within constitutional limits. Now, there is not here, as I think, 
any room whatever for mere construction, so explicit are the words of 
Congress, Let us follow the clauses of the statute in their order. The 
statute enables the married v/oman to take, as her own, property of any 
kind, no matter how acquired by her, as well as the avails of her skill, 
labor, or personal exertions, ‘as absolutely as if she were unmarried,’ 
It then confers upon married women the power to engage in any business, 
no matter what, and to enter into contracts, whether engaged in business 
or not, and to sue separately upon these contracts. If the statute stopped 
here, there would be ground for holding that it did not authorize this 
suit. But the statute goes further. It proceeds to authorize married 
women also to sue separately for the recovery, security and protection 
of their property; still more, they may sue separately ‘for torts committed 
against them as fully and freely as if they were unmarried,’ No dis¬ 
crimination is made, in either case, between the persons charged with 
committing the tort. No exception is made in reference to the husband, 
if he happens to be the party charged with transgressing the rights 
conferred upon the wife by the statute. In other words, Congress by 
these statutory provisions, destroys the unity of the marriage associa¬ 
tion as it had previously existed. It makes a radical change in the rela¬ 
tions of man and wife, as those relations were at common law in this 
District, In respect of business and property the married woman is 
given absolute control; in respect of the recovery and protection of her 
property, she may sue, separately, in tort, as if she was unmarried; 
and in respect of herself, that is, of her person, she may sue, as fully and 
freely as if she were unmarried, ‘for torts commited against her,’ So 
the statute expressly reads, 

“But, my brethren think that notwithstanding the destruction of the 
unity of the married relation, it could not have been intended to open 
the doors of the courts to accusations of all sorts by husband and wife 
against each other; and, therefore, they are moved to add, by construction, 
to the provision that married women may ‘sue separately * * * 

for torts committed against them as fully and freely as if they were 
unmarried’ these words: ‘Provided, however, that the wife shall not 
be entitled in any case, to sue her husband for a tort committed against 
her 'person: If the husband violently takes possession of his wife’s 
property and withholds it from her she may, under the statute, sue hipi, 
separately, for damages. That action would also be one in tort. If 
these propositions are disputed, what becomes of the words in the statute 
to the effect that she may ‘sue separately for the recovery, security and 
protection’ of her property? But if they are conceded, as I think they 
must be, then Congress, under the construction now placed by the Court 
in the statute, is put in the anomalous position of allowing a married 
woman to sue her husband separately, in tort, for the recovery of her 
property, but denying her the right or privilege to sue him separately, 
in tort, for damages arising from the brutal assaults upon her person. 
I will not assume that Congress intended to bring about any such result. 
I cannot believe that it intended to permit the wife to sue the husband 
separately, in tort, for the recovery, including damages for the detention 
of her property, and at the same time denying her the right to sue him, 
separately, for a tort committed against her person.” 

— Thompson v. Thompson, 218 U. S. 611. 


368 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT 

In Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U. S., 219, decided in Jan., 1911, the judg¬ 
ment of the Alabama Supreme Court, affirming a judgment of conviction 
in the Montgomery City Court, was reversed. The case was decided by 
Justice Hughes, White, Ch. J., and Harlan, McKenna and Day, J., 
concurring; Holmes, J., writing, and Lurton, J., concurring in dissent. 
It was held, in substance, that while its immediate concern was African 
slavery, the 13th Amendment was a charter of universal civil freedom 
for all persons of whatever race, color or estate under the flag; the con¬ 
stitutional prohibition against all control by coercion of the personal 
service of one man for the benefit of another, cannot be transgressed in¬ 
directly, by creating a statutory enactment; and a State cannot compel 
‘involuntary servitude’ in carrying out contracts of personal service by 
making non-performance presumptive evidence of guilt of intent to 
defraud. Justice Hughes saying; 

“The act of Congress, nullifying all State laws by which it should 
be attempted to enforce the ‘service of labor of any persons or peons, 
in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise,’ necessarily embraces 
all legislation which seeks to compel the service of labor by making it 
a means to refuse or fail to perform it. Such law^s would furnish the 
readiest means of compulsion. The 13th Amendment prohibits involun¬ 
tary servitude, except as punishment for crime. But the exception, 
allowing full latitude for the enforcement of penal laws, does not destroy 
the prohibition. It does not permit slavery or involuntary servitude 
to be established or maintained through the operation of the criminal 
law, by making it a crime to submit to the one, or to render the service 
which would constitute the other. The State may impose involuntary 
servitude as a punishment for crime, but it may not compel one man to 
labor for another, in payment of a debt, by punishing him as a criminal, 
if he does not perform the service, or pay the debt. 

“If the statute in this case had authorized the employing company 
to seize the debtor, and hold him to the service until he paid the $15.00, 
or had furnished the equivalent in labor, its invalidity would not be 
questioned. It would be equally clear that the State could not authorize 
the constabulary to prevent the servant from escaping and to force him 
to work out his debt. But the State could not avail itself of the sanction 
of the criminal law to supply the compulsion any more than it could 
use or authorize the use of physical force. ‘In contemplation of the 
law the compulsion of such service, by the fear of punishment under 
a criminal statute is more powerful than any guard which the employer 
could station.’ 

“What the State may not do directly, it may not do indirectly. If 
it cannot punish the servant as a criminal for the mere failure or refusal 
to serve without paying his debt it is not permitted to accomplish the 
same result by creating a statutory compulsion which upon proof of no 
other fact exposes him to conviction and punishment. Without imputing 
any actual motive to oppress, we must consider the natural operation 
of the statute here in question, and it is apparent that it furnishes a 
convenient instrument for the coercion which the Constitution and the 
Act of Congress forbid; an instrument of compulsion peculiarly effective 
as against the poor and the ignorant, its most likely victims. There is 
no more important concern than to safeguard the freedom of labor, 
upon which alone, can enduring prosperity be based. The provisions 
designed to secure it would soon become a barren form, it it were possible 
to establish a statutory presumption of this sort, and to hold over the 
heads of the laborers the threat of punishment for crime, under the name 
of fraud, but merely upon evidence of failure to work out their debts. 
The Act of Congress deprives of effect all legislative measures of any State 
through which, directly or indirectly, the prohibited thing, to-wit, com- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


359 


pulsory service to secure the payment of a debt, may be established 
or maintained, and we conclude that Section 4730, as amended, of the 
Code of Alabama, in so far as it makes the refusal or failure to perform 
the act or service, without refunding the money or paying for the property 
received, prima facie evidence of the commission of the crime which 
the_ section defines, is in conflict with the 13th Amendment, and the 
legislation authorized by that Amendment, and is, therefore, invalid.” 

SKETCH OF HUGHES 

Charles E. Hughes, before becoming Govenor of New York, had been 
a practicing lawyer in N. Y. City since 1884 with the exception of two 
years (1891-3), when he was Professor in Cornell College of Law, at 
Ithaca. His professional eminence had received public recognition 
through his services in 1905-6, as counsel to the special investigating 
bodies of the N. Y. Legislature, known as the Stevens Gas and Electric 
Lighting Committee, and the Armstrong Life Insurance Investigating 
Committee. In 1906, he had been designated as one of the special 
counsel of the U. S. Department of Justice to initiate steps for the prose¬ 
cution of the so-called violations of the coal-owning and coal-carrying 
railroads, of the Anti-Trust, and Anti-Rebate laws. His judicial career 
began Oct. 10, 1910, and ended June 10, 1916, upon his resignation as 
Supreme Court Judge of the United States, to which he had been appoint¬ 
ed by President Taft, succeeding Justice Brewer. During his nearly 
six years of service he wrote the majority opinions, in 151 cases, and 
dissents in 30 cases, or 181 opinions. He showed great independence of 
mind and his statesmanship therein, as well related in a work by William 
L. Ransom, of the N. Y. City Bar, issued in October, 1916, 281 pp., 
entitled, ‘Charles E. Hughes, the Statesman as Shown in the Opinions 
of the Jurist,’ reminding one of the observation of Jos. P. Cotton, Jr., 
in his ‘Constitutional Decisions of John Marshall,’ in which he says: 
‘‘Save Washington, Hamilton and Lincoln, no American stands higher 
(than Marshall) as a constructive statesman in the work of evolution of 
the Union, and it is peculiarly of his work of statesmanship that practi¬ 
cally without exception all of it found expression in the course of judicial 
opinions as Chief Justice.”— The Author. 

Mr. Hughes ran for President of the U. S. an 1916, but was defeated 
by Woodrow Wilson. He is now the premier of the American Govern¬ 
ment, as Secretary of State, under President Harding and a very 
efficient executive officer.— Author. 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

“Of him may be said, perhaps, with as much propriety as of any other 
man, that he never said a word too soon, nor a word too late, nor a word 
too much.”— John Bigelow. 




WILLIAM T. HUGHES, Illinois 

BACON AND COKE COAIPARED 

“Was Bacon or Coke the greatest lawyer? 

“Bacon published as guide posts to the law twenty-five maxims which 
may be called his beacon lights, or his datum posts. He left 300 maxims 
unpublished, and a digest plan to facilitate finding and learning the law. 
Evidently he believed that the law could be taught from a few fundamen¬ 
tal principles. He thought that twenty-five maxims, made conspicuous 
and well impressed, might be viewed as the grain of mustard, or as the 
leaven of the loaf in the parables. He saw that the highest efforts of 
teaching are wonderfully condensed, and that the active legal mind can 
deduce much from the proverb that contains within itself the condensed 
good sense of nations. The sense being there, it may be best brought 
out by thought, not by slavishly following decision and dictum. From 
the data we possess, it thus seems fair to conclude that Bacon viewed the 
law as of Roman origin. His maxims, not only those above mentioned, 
but also those relating to the Court of Chancery, support this view. 
He was a philosopher, and certainly knew the sprouts that would spring 
from the roots of the law, but evidently included a digest as well, in which 
the sprouts, or cases, growing out of the maxims, were to be classified 
under appropriate maxim heads. Thus the lawyer, knowing the principle 
or maxim upon which his case rested, could, after reading the text, 
follow the discussion into the digest of cases fiowing from the principle 
under review. To Bacon, the maxim was a ray of reason, a beacon light 
that safeguards and guides the way. With him who knows a few well 
selected maxims, there can be no juggling with jurisprudence. * * * 

“Bacon believed in great, high laws of morals, reason, logic and justice; 
that arbitrary edicts contrary to fundamental law are ab initio void. 
He believed in a supreme law to which all must yield obedience or atone 
for the consequences. He believed that the supreme law is reducible 
to a few well-worn maxims, which, when understood are seen to be a 
touchstone to the solution of legal problems. He believed in other words, 
that these fundamental principles are in the law and not a thing apart 
from it; that they are practical and workable principles, and necessarily 
must be so. The grasp of the science of the law places him in the most 
honored niche of the Pantheon of Philosophy. He rises above Aristotle 
and Cicero, illumined sons of Greece and Rome. None are to be men¬ 
tioned with him. * * * 

“Coke, on the other hand, published his Institutes, a digest of the Com¬ 
mon Law, and the profession, following his lead, buried themselves in 
it, and have remained buried to the present day. They are drudges in 
treadmills. Let the lawyer look around him at our mass of digests and 
encyclopedias, each boasting its tens and hundreds of thousands of pre¬ 
cedents; let him consider the increasing volume of our reports, burdened 
with opinions led astray by these irreconcilable precedents. * * * 

Coke believed in the supremacy of the Common Law as an indigenous 
English product. Believed not in the omnipotence even of Parliament, 
but his resistance to that body seems to have come from dictates of his 
aggressive nature in asserting the dignity of his own bench. He felt that 
Englishmen, by reason of something peculiar in their Common Law, 
were entitled to the rights for which they had fought and died, and in 
their possession of which he gloried. * * * 

“Coke was a man of precedents; Bacon was a man of principle. Coke 
was a laborer. Bacon was a thinker. Coke made of the lawyer a drudge 
in the treadmill, hunting Case Law, drivel for drudges, while Bacon 



GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


361 


saw the law, as a spirit. Coke was eternally delving to find out what 
the judges had said; Bacon studied the maxims of the Civil Law, to which 
no citation need be attached, but which take possession of the human 
mind by their own inherent dynamic force. 

. “There, as we say, lay the parting of the ways. Bacon, after success¬ 
fully establishing the supremacy of the principles of the Civil Law over 
those of the Common Law, died under his accumulating sorrows before 
he could publish his manuscript on the maxims, from which as the 
fountain head he deduced the rules of law. To the misfortune of the 
world, he left its jurisprudence—its very foundation stone—unfinished 
and unplaced. Unable to furnish his manuscript himself, he begged the 
king to grant him the means. Coke was rich (his first wife brought him 
$150,000 and left it to him at her death) and could have helped him, 
but he sought no such altruistic distinction. The king refused. Bacon 
died, the manuscripts were lost and we have but the maxims at most 
which he possibly gathered. Now at what day since has not the maxim 
work seen the greatest juridical light? This is a significant question, 
from a consideration of which appears the grandeur of Bacon.” 

—In Grounds and Rudiments of the Laiv. 


LAUGHTER 

“No man who has once heartily laughed can be altogether irreclaimably 
])ad. How much lies in laughter; the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher 
the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in tlie 
smile of others lies a cold glitter of ice; the fev/est are able to laugh, 
what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the 
throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffing, husky cachinnation, 
as if they were laughing thi'ough wool; of none such comes good. The 
man who cannot laugh, is not only fit for treason, stratagem and spoils, 
but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.”— Thos. Carlyle. 


BARRISTERS AND SOLICITORS 

“Legal practitioners in the English courts are divided into two principal 
Icasses, called barristers and solicitors. The barrister, who must be 
called to the bar or licensed by one of the four ancient Inns of Court, 
alone has the right to act as an advocate in the various branches of the 
high court. The solicitor, or attorney-at-law, is not a member of the bar, 
but he is the lawyer of record for the plaintiff or defendant, and he alone 
has the legal right to institute and manage proceedings at law. Otherwise 
stated, the solicitor is what we call an office lawyer, while the barrister 
does the work alloted by us to trial counsel.” 

—Ilyacinthe Ringrose, in ^Casc and Commentd 




EDWARD HYDE, Earl of Clarendon (1609 1674), England 
SAYINGS OF LORD CLARENDON 
INDUSTRY 

“There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain 
to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued 
in all countries and by all nations; it is the philosopher’s stone, that 
turns all metals, and even stones, into gold, and suffers no want to 
break into its dwellings; it is the northwest passage, that brings the 
merchant’s ships as soon to him as he can desire; in a word, it conquers 
all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay contribution.” 

BOOKS 

“He that loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age, will 
hardly love them enough afterwards to understand them.” 

CONVERSATION 

“Counsel and conversation are a second education, which improve all 
the virtue, and correct all the vice of the first, and of nature itself.” 

INSIGNIFICANCE 

“No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do no hurt.” 

FEAST 

“It is not the quality of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, 
which makes the feast.” 

DISCRETION 

“Because discretion is always predominant in true friendship, it works 
and prevails least upon fools. Wicked men are often reformed by it, 
weak men seldom.” 

FRIENDSHIP 

“Friendship hath the skill and observation of the best physician, the 
diligence and vigilance of the best nurse, and the tenderness and patience 
of the best mother.” 

LAW AND LIBERTY 

“The law is the standard and guardian of our liberty; it circumscribes 
and defends it; but to imagine liberty without a law, is to imagine every 
man with his sword in his hand to destroy him, who is weaker than 
himself; and that would be no pleasant prospect to those who cry out 
most for liberty.” 

LIFE 

“If we do not weigh and consider to what end this life is given us, 
and thereupon order and dispose it right, we do not number our days 
in the narrowest and most limited signification.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


363 


PRIDE 

“Pride, as is compounded of the vanity and ill nature that dispose 
men to admire themselves, and condemn other men, retains its vigor 
longer than any other vice, and rarely expires but with life itself. 
Without the sovereign influence of God’s grace, men very rarely put 
off all the trappings of their pride till they who are about them put on 
their winding-sheet.” 

CONTEMPT OF OTHERS 

“The disesteem and contempt of others is inseparable from pride. 
It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves by undervaluing our neigh¬ 
bors.” 

IDLENESS 

“At the last great day it will probably appear that the very idle man, 
who hath never employed himself, may be in little better condition than 
he who hath been worst employed; then idleness shall be declared to be 
a species of wickedness, and doing nothing to be the activity of a beast.” 

ANGER 

“Anger is the most important passion that accompanies the mind 
of man. It effects nothing it goes about, and it hurts the man who is 
possessed by it more than any other against whom it is directed.” 

TIME 

“The laboring man and the artiflcer knows what every hour of his time 
is worth, and parts not with it but for the full value; they are only 
noblemen and gentlemen, who would know best how to use it, that think 
it only fit to be cast away; and their not knowing how to set a true 
value upon this, is the true cause of the wrong estimate they make of 
all other things.” 

WAR 

“We cannot make a more lively representation and emblem to our¬ 
selves of hell, than by the view of a kingdom at war.” 

WEAKNESS 

“Few men have done more harm than those who have been thought 
to be able to do the least; and there cannot be a gveater error than to 
believe a man whom we see qualifled with too mean parts to do good, to 
be, therefore, incapable of doing hurt. There is a supply of malice, of 
pride of industry, and even of folly, in the weakest, when he sets his 
heart upon it, that makes a strange progress in wickedness.” 

WORLDLINESS 

“God hath not taken all that pains in forming, framing, furnishing, 
and adorning this world, that they who were made by Him to live in it, 
should despise it; it will be well enough if they do not love it so immoder¬ 
ately as to prefer it before Him who made it.” 

Clarendon, as a chancellor made no great impression in the court 9 f 
Chancery. His early legal training had long been interrupted and his 
political preoccupations probably rendered necessary the delegation of 


364 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


many of his judicial duties to others. He was noted as an historian and 
statesman. He built a home in London, known as Clarendon House, or 
Dunkirk House, which cost $250,000, and was one of the finest residences 
in England. It was filled with the finest library ever collected in Great 
Britain, and contained a picture gallery of the chefs-d’oeuvre of the best 
master; and also a fine country home at Cornbury, at Oxfordshire, where 
he exercised hospitality on a grand scale during the long vacations. 
He rose to his office through his literary and oratorical gifts. His cor¬ 
respondence, amounting to over 100 volumes, is in the Bodelian Library 
at Oxford. His History of the Rebellion is in 15 volumes. He was ban¬ 
ished by an act of Parliament, and passed the last six years of his life in 
exile in France. There was really nothing in the charge of treason 
against him, largely instigated by Charles II., who had turned against 
him. Considered the law—“That great and admirable system.” 

Southey calls him, “The wisest, most upright of statesmen,” and 
George Brodie, “A miserable sycophant and canting hypocrite.” 

The truth lies between these two estimates; but Southey’s is much 
the truer one.— Author. 


METHODS OF READING 

When Mr. Gladstone read a book, he did so pencil in hand, marking on the 
margin those passages which he wished to remember, querying those of 
which he was in doubt and putting a cross opposite those which he dis¬ 
puted. At the end of the volume he constructed an index of his own, 
which enabled him to refer to those things he wished to remember. 
Darwin records a meeting with Buckle and “was very glad to learn 
from him his system of collecting facts. He told me that he bought all 
the books which he read and made a full index to each of the facts 
which he thought might prove serviceable to him, and that he could 
always remember in what book he had read anything, for his memory 
was wonderful. I asked him how at first he could judge what facts would 
be serviceable and he answered that he did not know, but that a sort of 
an instinct guided liim. From this habit of making indices he was enabled 
to give the astonishing number of references on all sorts of subjects 
which may be found in his ‘History of Chdlization.’ ” 

Darwin’s own method, as described by his son, was not very dissimilar. 
“In each book as he read it, he marked passages bearing on his work. 
In reading a book or pamphlet he made pencil lines at the side of the 
page, often adding short remarks, and at the end made a list of the pages 
marked. When it was catalogued and put away, the marked pages were 
looked at, and so a rough abstract of the book was made.”— The Author. 




JOHN J. INGALLS (1833-1900), Kansas 


OPPORTUNITY 

“Master of human destinies am I! 

Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait. 

Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate 
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by 
Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late 
I knock unbidden once at every gate! 

If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before 
I turn away. It is the hour of fate, 

And they who follow me reach every state 
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, 

Condemned to failure, penury and woe. 

Seek me in vain and uselessly implore. 

I answer not, and I return no more!” 

—John J. Ingalls. 

PENNSYLVANIA’S GREAT MEN 

“Mr. President, Pennsylvania has produced but two great men; Ben¬ 
jamin Franklin, of Massachusetts, and Albert Gallatin, of Switzerland.” 
— Joh7i J. Ingalls to a Penn. Senator, who had made an attack on 
Kansas, in the United. States Senate. 

THE STATE OF DELAWARE 

“And, Mr. President, this is the State (Kansas) that has been assailed 
in the chamber by a man who represents in part—in part, Mr. President— 
a State which has two counties when the tide is up and three when the 
tide is down.” 

—John J. Ingalls hi reply to Senator Salisbury, of Delaware, who 
had attacked Kansas, in the U. S. Senate. 

It was said of Ingalls that “Nobody who knew him ever walked care¬ 
lessly or insolently on his preserves without regretting it.” As he was 
an emperor in the realm of expression, and had three text-books: nature, 
humanity, and the dictionary. The late Chas. B. Reed, of Kansas City, 
Mo., said he lived neighbors to Ingalls in Atchison, Kansas, and when 
asked by his brother Prank, how he was able to use just the right word, 
Ingalls replied: “Well, I am able to use the best word when and where 
needed, because I have studied the dictionary an hour a day for the 
last 15 years.” 

GRASS 

“Next in importance to the divine profusion of water, fight and air, 
those three physical facts which rendered existence possible, may be 
reckoned the universal benefits of grass. Living in the sunshine among 
buttercups and dandelions of May, scarcely higher in intelligence than 
the minute tenants of the mimic wilderness, our earliest recollections are 
of grass, and when the fitful fever is ended, and the foolish wrangle of the 
market and forum is closed, grass heals over the scar which our descent 
into the bosom of the earth made, and the carpet of the infant becomes 
the blanket of the dead. Grass is the forgiveness of Nature—her constant 
benediction. Fields trampled with battle, saturated with blood, torn with 
the rust of cannon, grow green again with grass and carnage is forgotten. 


366 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Streets abandoned by traffic become grass-grown like rural lanes and are 
obliterated. Forests decay and harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass 
is immortal; beleagured by' sullen hosts of winter, it withdraws into the 
impregnable fortress of its subterranean vitality and emerges upon the 
first solicitation of spring. 

“Sown by the winds, by wandering birds, propagated by the subtle 
horticulture of the elements, wliich are its ministers and servants, it 
softens the rude outline of the world. It invades the solitudes of deserts, 
climbs the inaccessible slopes and forbidding pinnacles of mountains, 
modifies climates and determines the history, character and destiny 
of nations. Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigor and aggres¬ 
sion. Banished from the thoroughfare and field, it bides its time to return, 
and when vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has perished, it silently 
resumes the throne from which it has been expelled, but which it never 
abdicates. 

“It bears no blazonry of bloom to charm the senses with fragrance of 
splendor, but its homely hue is more enchanting than the lily or the rose. 
It yields no fruit in earth or air, yet should its harvest fail for a single year, 
famine would depopulate the world.”— John J. Ingalls. 

IMMORTALITY—EULOGY ON BEN HILL 

“Ben Hill has gone to the undiscovered country. Whether his journey 
thither was but one step across an imperceptible frontier, or whether 
an interminable ocean, black, unfluctuating and voiceless, stretches 
between these earthly coasts and those invisible shores, we do not know. 
Whether on that August morning after death he saw a more glorious 
sun rise with unimaginable splendor above a celestial horizon, or whether 
his apathetic and unconscious ashes still sleep in cold obstruction and 
insensible oblivion, we do not know. Whether his strong, but subtle 
energies found instant exercise in another forum; whether his dexterous 
and disciplined faculties are now contending in a higher Senate than 
ours for supremacy, or whether his powers were dissipated and dispersed 
with his parting breath, we do not know. Whether his passions, ambitions 
and affections still sway, attract and impel; whether he yet remembers 
us as we remember him, we do not know. 

“These are the unsolved and insoluble problems of mortal life and 
human destiny, which prorapted the troubled patriarch to ask that 
momentous question, for which the ages have given no answer. Tf a 
man die, shall he live again ?’. Every man is the center of a circle whose 
fatal circumference he cannot pass. Within its narrow confines he is 
potential; beyond it he perishes, and if immortality is a splendid but 
delusive dream; if the imcompleteness of every career, even the longest 
and most fortunate, be not supplemented and perfected after its termi¬ 
nation here, then he who dreads to die should fear to live, for life is a trag¬ 
edy more desolate and inexplicable than death.” 

—John J. Ingalls' Eulogy in U. S. Senate, on the death of Ben Hill. 

HAPPINESS 

“Happiness is an endowment, and not an acquisition. It depends 
more upon temperament and disposition than environment. It is a state 
or condition of the mind, and not a commodity to be bought or sold in the 
market. A beggar may be happier in his rags than a king in his purple. 
Poverty is no more incompatible with happiness than wealth, and the 
inquiry, ‘how to be happy though poor,’ implies a want of understanding 
of the conditions upon which happiness depends. Dives was not happy 
because he was a milhonaire, nor Lazarus wretched because he was a 
pauper. There is a quality in the soul of man that is superior to circum¬ 
stances and that defies calamity and misfortune. The man who is un- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


367 


happy when he is poor would be unhappy if he were rich, and he who is 
happy in a palace in Paris would be happy in a dugout on the frontier 
of Dakota. There are as many unhappy rich men as there are unhappy 
poor men. Every heart knows its own bitterness and its own joy. Not 
that wealth and what it brings is not desirable—books, travel, leisure, 
comfort, the best food and raiment, agreeable companionship—but all 
these do not necessarily bring happiness and may coexist with the deep¬ 
est wretchedness, while adversity and penury, exile and privation are not 
incompatible with the loftiest exaltation of the soul. 

“ ‘More true joy Marcellus exiled feels. 

Than Caesar with a Senate at his heels.’ ” 

—John J. Ingalls. 

Kansas: “Kansas is the navel of the nation. Diagonals drawn from 
Duluth to Galveston, from Washington to San Francisco, from Tallahassee 
to Olympia, from Sacramento to Augusta, intersect it in its center.” 

—John J. Ingalls. 

WICKEDNESS 

“The w'orld has no more conspicuous illustration of the truth that 
nothing is so unprofitable as wickedness. The thief robs himself. The 
adulterer pollutes himself, than that which kills the victim. Behind 
every criminal in the universe silent but relentless stands with uplifted 
blade, the shadow of vengeance and retribution. The Bible has it: ‘The 
wages of sin is death.’ ” 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

“The Democratic party, ha\dng neither conscience, convictions nor 
defined principles, inevitably allies itself with discontent, and is ar¬ 
rayed against social order. It is strongest where public and private 
morality is weakest. Its citadels are the South, where society is 
distinctly feudal, and in the great cities, where the ignorant and 
criminal elements are most energetic. It has no beliefs, maxims or 
formulas. Its creed is the instruction of Jefferson—that in a popular 
government wealth, intelligence and morality are ultimately no match 
for numbers. For twenty-five years its only policy has been to complain 
to oppose, to deny, to protest and ultimately to acquiesce. So when 
Cleveland came in, being without plans, purpose, or policy, his adminis¬ 
tration floundered pitiably both in domestic and foreign affairs, was 
contemptible in many things and feeble in all, and left absolutely no 
impression whatever upon history except the matter of vetoing bills for 
pensions and public buildings. It followed Republican methods and 
carried on Republican ideas, so that when Harrison was inaugurated, 
it was as if a stitch had been dropped merely, and we have kept right along 
with our work.”— From an interview. 

THE RACE TO WHICH WE BELONG 

“The race to which we belong is the most arrogant and rapacious, the 
most exclusive and indomitable in history. It is the conquering and the 
unconquerable race, through which alone man has taken possession of 
the physical and moral world. To our race humanity is indebted for 
religion, for literature, for jurisprudence and for administration. The 
home and the family are its contributions to society. Individualism, 
fraternity, liberty and equality have been its contributions to the state. 
All other races have been its enemies or its victims.” 

—Speech in U. S. Sengte, Jaro. 23, 1890; 'To Provide for Persons of 
Color to Emigrate from the Southern States.' 


ROBERT G. INGERSOLL (1833-1899), Illinois 


MINORITY 

'‘Are majorities always right? If the minority had never spoken, 
what today would have been the condition of the world ? Are the majority 
the pioneers of progress, or does the pioneer, as a rule, walk alone? Is 
it his duty to close his lips? Must the inventor allow his inventions to 
die in the brain? Must the discoverer of new truths make his mind a 
tomb? Is man under any obligation to his fellows? Was the Episcopal 
religion always in the majority? Was it at any time in the history of the 
world an unpleasant tiling to be called a Protestant? Was Luther a 
misfortune to the human race?” 

— R. G. Ingersoll, N. A. Review, Apr., ’89, p. k09. 

NAPOLEON, LOVE VS. GLORY 

“A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a mag¬ 
nificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity; and gazed 
upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble, where rest at last the 
ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade, and thought 
about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him 
walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide; I saw him 
at Toulon; I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris; I 
saw him at the head of the army in Italy; I saw him crossing the bridge 
of Lodi, with the tri-color in his hand; I saw him in Egypt, in the shadows 
of the pyramids; I saw him conquer the Alps, and mingle the eagles of 
France with the eagles of the crags; I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm and 
Austerlitz; I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the 
cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter’s withered leaves. 

I saw him at Leipsic, in defeat and disaster; driven by a million bayonets 
back upon Paris; clutched like a wild beast; banished to Elba, I saw him 
escape, and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon 
the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to week 
the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at Helena, with his 
hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. 

I thought of the orphans and widows he had made, of the only woman 
who had ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of am¬ 
bition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant, and worn 
wooden shoes; I would rather have lived in a hut, with a vine groAving 
over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn 
sun, I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my loving 
wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children 
upon my knees and their arms about me. I Avould rather have been 
that man, and gone doAvn to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, 
than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, 
kiioAvn as Napoleon the Great.”— Roht. G. Ingersoll. 

THE HOLIEST WORD IS WIFE 

“The prosecution have asked you, gentlemen of the jury, not only to 
violate the law of the land, they have asked you to violate the law of 
nature. They have maligned mercy. They have laughed at mercy. 
They have trampled upon the holiest human ties, and they have even 
made light of the fact that a wife in this trial has sat by her husband’s 
side. Think of it, 

“There is a painting in the Louvre, a painting of desolation, of despair 
and love. It represents the night of the Crucifixion. The Avorld is 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


369 


represented in shadow. The stars are dead, and yet in the darkness is 
seen a kneeling form. It is Mary Magdalene with loving lips and hands 
pressed against the bleeding feet of Christ. The skies were never dark 
enough nor starless enough; the storm was never fierce enough nor wild 
enough; the quick bolts of heaven were never lurid enough, and the arrows 
of slanders never flew thick enough to drive a noble woman from her 
husband’s side. And so it is in all of human speech, the holiest word is 
WIFEd' 

—Ill reply to Mr. Merrick in the first Star Route Trial, Defense of 

Stephen W. Dorsey. 

Shakesieare: “Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves 
touched all the shores of thought.” 

— Written in a presentation copy of Shakespeare given the author. 

Creed: “Above all statutes rises the figure of Justice, I give to all 
others the rights I claim for myself, without regard to complexion or race.” 

— Ingersoll. 

Power: “Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. 
Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man 
really is, give him power.”— From his lecture on Lincoln. 

Lincoln: “He is the gentlest memory of our world.”— R. G. Ingersoll. 
INGERSOLL’S CREED 

“My creed is to love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to 
pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember 
benefits, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to make relentless war 
against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make 
a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in Nature, to cultivate the 
mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, 
the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, 
to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, 
to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate 
hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn before the night, to 
do the best that can be done and then, to be resigned.” 


A TRIBUTE TO WOMAN 

“It takes a hundred men to make an encampment, but one woman can 
make a home. I not only admire woman as the most beautiful object 
ever created, but I reverence her as the redeeming glory of humanity, 
the sanctuary of all the virtues, the pledge of all perfect qualities of head 
and heart. It is not just or right to lay the sins of men at the feet of 
woman. It is because women are much better than men that their 
faults are considered greater. A man’s desire is the foundation of his 
love, but a woman’s desire is born of her love. The one thing in this 
world that is constant, the one peak that rises above the clouds, the one 
window in which the light forever burns, the one star that darkness can¬ 
not quench, is woman’s love. It rises to the greatest heights, it sinks to 
the lowest depths, it forgives the most cruel injuries. It is perennial of 
life, and grown in every climate. Neither coldness nor neglect, harsh¬ 
ness nor cruelty can extinguish it. A woman’s love is the perfume of the 
heart. This is the real love that subdues the earth; the love that has 
wrought miracles of art; that gives us music all the way from the cradle¬ 
song to the grand symphony that bears the soul away on wings of Are. 
‘A love that is greater than power, sweeter than life, and stronger than 
death.’ ”— R. G. Ingersoll. 


370 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ORATORY 

“Oratory is the same the world over. The man who thinks on his 
feet, who has the pose of passion, the face that thought illuminates, a 
voice in harmony with the ideas expressed, who has logic like a column 
and poetry like a vine, who transfigures the common, dresses the ideas 
of the people in purple and fine linen, who has the art of finding the best 
and noblest in his hearers, and who in a thousand ways creates the climate 
in which the best grows and flourishes and bursts into blossom—that man 
is an orator, no matter of what time or what country. * * * y 

never heard any of the great English speakers, and consequently can 
pass no judgment as to their merits, except such as depends on reading. 
The finest paragraph ever uttered in Great Britain was by Curran in 
his defense of Rowan. Gladstone lacks logic. Bright was a great speaker, 
but lacked imagination and the creative faculty. Disraeli spoke to the 
clubs, and his speeches were artificial. We have had several fine speakers 
in America. Thomas Corwin stands at the top of the natural orators. 
He had more arrows in his quiver; had genius, humor, pathos, wit, and 
logic. He was an actor. His body talked. His meaning was in his lips 
and eyes. Sergeant S. Prentiss, the lawyer, was a very great talker, he 
threw his life away. Said profound and beautiful things, but lacked 
application; was uneven, disproportioned, saying ordinary things on great 
occasions, and the sublimest and most beautiful things, without the slight¬ 
est provocation. Henry Ward Beecher was the greatest that the pulpit 
has produced. Theodore Parker was a great orator, preached great 
sermons; those on ‘Old Age,’ ‘Webster,’ and ‘Liberty’ were marvelously 
expressed, and when he spoke of human events, freedom, duty, the ideal 
mental integrity, he seemed inspired. In this country, however, probably 
Daniel Webster occupies the highest place in general esteem. He had 
great qualities; force, dignity, clearness, grandeur, but worshipped the 
past, kept his back to the sunrise, was not creative, no spirit of prophecy, 
lighted no torch not true to his ideal; yet he uttered a few great para¬ 
graphs, rich with thought, perfectly expressed.” 

— R. G. Ingersoll, in intervieio to N. Y. Sun, Apr., 1898. 

INGERSOLL’S COMMENT ON AUTHORS 

“The greatest novelist, in my opinion, who has ever written in the 
English language, was Charles Dickens. He was the greatest observer 
since Shakespeare. He had the eyes that see, the ears that really hear. 
I place him above Thackeray. Dickens wrote for the home, for the great 
public, Thackeray wrote for the clubs. The greatest novel in our language, 
and it may be in any other—is, according to my idea, ‘A Tale of Two 
Cities.’ In that are philosophy, pathos, self-sacrifice, wit, humor, the 
grotesque and the tragic. I think it is the most artistic novel that 1 
have read. The creations of Dickens’ brain have become the citizens 
of the world. Emerson was a fine writer, and did the world a great 
deal of good, but I do not class him with the first. I think he was rather 
a poet than a philosopher. His doctrine of compensation would be de¬ 
lightful if it had the facts to support it. Hawthorne was a great writer, 
though his style is a little monotonous, the matter is good. ‘The Marble 
Faun’ is by far his best effort. 

“Walt Whitman will hold a high place among American writers. 
His poem on the death of Lincoln, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard 
Bloom’d,’ is the greatest poem written on this continent. 

“James Whitcomb Riley has written some of the daintiest and sweetest 
things in American literature. Edward Fawcett’s ‘Magic Flower’ is as 
beautiful as anything Tennyson ever wrote. Eugene Field has written 
some charming things, natural and touching. Henry George wrote a 
wonderful book—one that arrested the attention of the world—one of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


371 


the greatest books of the century. While I do not believe in Ms destruc¬ 
tive theories, I gladly pay a tribute to his sincerity and his genius.” 

—From Interview ivith Ingersoll in Kansas City, Mo.., May 26, 1882. 

NOMINATING BLAINE FOR PRESIDENCY.- JUNE 15, 1876 

“The Republicans of the U. S. demand a man who knows prosperity 
and resumption, when they come, must cPme together; that when they 
come, they will come hand in hand, through the golden harvest fields; 
hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the fiaming 
forges; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire, greeted and 
grasped by the countless sons of toil. This money has to be dug out of 
the earth. You cannot make it by passing resolutions in a political 
convention. 

“The Republicans of the U. S. want a man who knows that this govern¬ 
ment should protect every citizen at home and abroad; who knows that 
any government that will not defend its defenders, and protect its pro¬ 
tectors, is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a man 
who believes in eternal separation of church and school. They demand a 
man whose political reputation is spotless as a star; but they do not 
demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character 
signed by a Confederate Congress. The man who has all, in full, heaped 
and rounded measure, all these splended qualifications, is the present 
grand and gallant leader of the Republican party—James G. Blaine. 

“Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements 
of its first century, asks for a man worthy of the past, and prophetic of 
the future; asks for a man who is the grandest combination of heart, 
conscience and brain beneath her fiag—such a man is James G. Blaine, 
For the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there can be no defeat. 
This is a great year—a year filled with recollections of the Revolution; 
filled with proud and tender memories of the past with the sacred legends 
of liberty—a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the foun¬ 
tains of enthusiasm; a year in which the people call for the man who has 
preserved in Congress what our Soldiers won upon the field; a year in 
which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason 
the tongue of slander—for the man who has snatched from the mask 
of Democracy the hideous face of rebellion; for the man who, like an 
intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all 
comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat. Like an armed warrior, 
like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the 
American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against 
the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners 
of its honor. For the Republican party to desert this gallant leader 
now is as though an army should desert their general upon the field 
of battle. 

“James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred 
standard of the Republican party. I call it sacred because no human 
being can stand beneath its folds without becoming and remaining free. 

“Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great Republic, 
the only republic that ever existed upon this earth; in the name of all 
the defenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiep 
living; in the name of her soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and in 
the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Ander- 
sonville and Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers, Illinois— 
Illinois nominates for the next President of this Country, that prince of 
parliamentarians—that leader of leaders—James G. Blaine.” 

Ingersoll said in an interview at Indianapolis, Ind., Feb. 18, 1892, 
in reference to the history of this speech: “It was not born entirely of 
the occasion. It took me several years to put the thought in form 


372 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


—to paint the pictures with words. No man can do his best on the in¬ 
stant. Iron to be beaten into perfect form has to be heated several 
times and turned upon the anvil many more, and hammered long and 
often. * * * Now and then while a man is talldng, heated^ with 

his subject, a great thought, sudden as a flash of lightning, illuminates 
the intellectual sky, and a great sentence clothed in words of purple, 
falls, or rather rushes from his bps—but a continuous flight is born, 
not only of enthusiasm ibut of long and careful thought.” 

A WRONG DECISION, ALL MUST ACQUIESCE 

“We must remember that it is one of the necessities of government 
that there should be a court of last resort; and while all courts will more 
or less fail to do justice, still, the wit of man, as yet, has devised no better 
way. Even after reading this decision (The Civil Rights case, of October, 
1883), we must take it for granted that the judges of the Supreme Court 
arrived at their conclusions honestly and in accordance with the best 
light they had, while they had the right to render the decision, every 
citizen has the right to give his opinion as to whether that decision is 
good or bad. Knowing that they are liable to be mistaken, and honestly 
mistaken, we should always be charitable enough to admit that others 
may be mistaken, and we may also take another step, and admit that we 
may be mistaken about their being mistaken. We must remember, too, 
that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges 
their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased. 
No matter whether a man wears a crown or a robe or a rag. Under the 
emblem of power and the emblem of poverty, the man alike resides. 
The real thing is the man—the distinction often exists only in the clothes. 
Take away the crown—there is only a man. Remove the robe—there 
remains a man. Take away the rag, and we find at least a man,” 

—Remarks of Ingersoll in discussing at Lincoln's Hall Washington, 
D. C., upon the decision of the U. S. Supreme Court pronouncing 
the Civil Rights Act Unconstitutional, Oct., 1883. 11 Works, Jf.. 

“Mr. Ingersoll is the most brilliant speaker of the English tongue of 
all men on this globe,” Henry Ward Beecher, in introducing Col. 
Ingersoll to a Brooklyn audience, Oct. 30, 1880, in the Garfield campaign. 

CHILDHOOD’S LAUGHTER 

“Strike with hand of fire, weird musician, thy harp, strung with 
Apollo’s golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet 
and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy 
silver notes do touch the skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the 
lover’s wandering on the vine-clad hills; but know your sweetest strains 
are discords all compared with childhood’s happy laugh, the laughter 
that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy; oh, rippling river 
of life, thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and man, 
and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, 
laughter, divine daughter of joy, make dimples enough in the cheeks 
of the world to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.” 

— R. G. Ingersoll. 

LOVE 

“Love is the only thing in which the height of extravagance is the 
last degree of economy. If you have been emperor of the round world, 
and you have never loved and been loved, your life has been a failure.” 
— R. G. Ingersoll. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAYWERS 


373 


SHAKESPEARE 

“Shakespeare was the greatest genius of our world. He left us the 
greatest legacy of all the dead—the treasures of the greatest soul that 
ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, robes and gems 
of thought. * ♦ * ji^jg writings there is no direct mention of any 

of his contemporaries. We do not know of any poet, author, soldier, 
sailor, statesman, priest, nobleman, king or queen that Shakespeare 
directly mentioned. * * * jn pjg time the actor was a vagabond, 

the dramatist a disreputable person, yet the greatest dramas were then 
written. In spite of law, and social ostracism, he reached the many- 
colored dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens. * * * 

The plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learn¬ 
ing, that many people, those who imagine that universities furnish 
capacity, contend that Bacon must have been the author. We know 
Bacon. He was a scheming politician, a .courtier, a time-server of church 
and kind, and a corrupt judge. He never admitted the truth of the 
Copernican system, was doubtful whether instruments were of any 
advantage in scientific investigation; was ignorant of the higher branches 
of mathematics; and as a matter of fact, he added but little to the knowl¬ 
edge of the world; said that there had not been since Christ, any king 
or monarch so learned in erudition, divine or human, as James 1, a man 
whom Macaulay characterized as a ‘stammering, slobbering, trembling 
coward, whose writings were deformed by the grossest and vilest super¬ 
stitions, witches being the special objects of his fear, his hatred, and his 
persecution;’ that instead of being the greatest philosopher of his time, 
his writings are filled with a strange mingling of foolishness and philos¬ 
ophy, was ignorant of the law of acceleration of falling bodies, although 
the law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before 
Bacon wrote upon the subject; nor the principle of the lever; nor with the 
precession of the equinoxes; and was ill-read in those branches of learning 
in which, in his time, the most rapid progress has been made: that Bacon 
never claimed to be the author of the plays and sonnets attributed to 
Shakespeare, while the latter did. * * * There were many dramatists 

before and during the time of Shakespeare, but they were only the foot¬ 
hills of that mighty peak, the top of which the clouds and mists still 
hide—Chapnian and Marlowe, Hey wood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont 
and Fletcher. 

“There are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show 
that somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture, that the poem 
is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by 
a subordinate. Of course, Shakespeare made use of the works of others, 
and, we might say, of all others. The question is not, who furnished 
the stone, or who owned the quarry, but who chiseled the statue? Of 
all the poets, of all the writers, Shakespeare is the most original. He 
is as original as Nature. * * * There is in the greatest poetry a 

kind of extravagance that touches the infinite, and in this, Shakespeare 
exceeds all others. * * * He was an innovator, an iconoclast. 

Cared nothing for the authority of men, or of schools. Violated the 
‘unities,’ and cared nothing for the models of the ancient world. * * * 

The ordinary dramatists, the men of talent (and there is the same differ¬ 
ence between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason 
and a sculptor) create characters and become types. Types are of 
necessity caricatures, actual men and women are to some extent con¬ 
tradictory in their actions. In real people good and evil mingle. Types 
are all one way, or all the other. When I stood amid the great trees of 
California that lift their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking 
like Nature’s columns to support the sky, I thought of the poetry of 
Shakespeare. 


374 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“What a procession of men and women, statesmen and warriors, 
kings and clowns, issued from Shakespeare’s brain! What women! 

Isabella, in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect 
truth; 

Juliet, within whose heart passion and purity met like white and 
red within the bosom of a rose; 

Cordelia, who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of 
love with those gilded lies in hope of gain; 

Hermione, ‘tender as infancy and grace,’ who bore with perfect hope 
and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart; 

Desdemona, so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was 
incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying 
words sought to hide her lover’s crime, and with her last faint breath 
uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid 
lips; 

Perdita, ‘a violet dim and sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,’ ‘The 
sweetest lowborn lass that ever ran on the greensward;’ 

Miranda, who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to 
the kisses of the sun, and 

Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless 

Imogen, who cried: ‘What is it to be false?’ 

“Shakespeare has done more for women than all the other dramatists 
of the world. * * * 

“He was the greatest of philosophers. He knew the conditions of 
success, of happiness, the relations that men sustain to each other and 
the duties of all. He knew the weakness of the will, the sophistry of 
desire; that ‘there is no darkness but ignorance.’ * * * the realm 

of comparison, he seems to have exhausted the relations, parallels and 
similitudes of things. * * * He was the master of definition. Thus 

he says. 

Of The Drama, ‘Turning the accomplishments of many years into an 
hour-glass.’ 

Of Death, ‘This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod, 
to lie in cold obstruction and to rot.’ 

Op Memory, ‘The warder of the brain.’ 

Of the Body, ‘This muddy vesture of decay.’ 

Of Life, ‘Our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ 

Of an Echo, ‘The babbling gossip of the air.’ 

Op the World, ‘This bank and shoal of time.’ 

Op Rumor, ‘That it doubles, like the voice and echo.’ * * * 

“There is in Shapespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor 
and pathos. Humor is the rose, with the thorn. Wit is crystallization, 
humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart. 
Wit is the lightning of the soul. * * * 

“Some have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, 
as he shows such a knowledge of medicine, of the symptoms of disease 
and death, was so familiar with the brain and with insanity in all its 
forms. I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much, his 
generalizations were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of his 
time. * * * Nor do I believe he was a lawyer, a musician (though 

nearly every musical term known in his time, is to be found in ‘The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona’), nor a scientist. He had the observant eyes that 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


375 


really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all pictures, 
all thoughts, logic as unerring as light, the imagination that supplies 
defects and builds the' perfect from a fragment. And these faculties, 
these aptitudes, working together for what he did. He exceeded all the 
sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To him the whole world 
paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his feet. In him all 
races lived again, and even those to be were pictured in his brain, having 
seen a leaf and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers 
and the seas, and in his presence the cataracts would fall and foam, 
the mists rise, the clouds form and float. 

“Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the 
shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destin.y 
and will; over which swept all the storms of fate; ambition and revenge; 
upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the 
sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky 
lit with the eternal stars, an intellectual ocean, towards which all rivers 
run, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive 
their dew and rain.” 

— The above is briefed by the author from IngersoWs Lecture on 
Shakespeare, of 70 pages, delivered in 1891. See his Works. 

LOVE IS ETERNAL 

“It is a splendid thing to think that the woman you really love will 
never grow old to you. Though the wrinkles of time, though the mask 
of years, if you really love her, you will always And the face you loved 
and won. And a woman who really loves a man does not see that he 
grows old; he is not decrepit to her; he does not tremble; she always sees 
the same gallant gentleman who won her heart and hand. I like to think 
of it in that way, I like to think that love is eternal. ’ ’— Robert G. Ingersoll. 

LOVE 

“The affection that man has for woman is, in my judgment, the holiest 
and the most beautiful thing in nature; the affection that woman has 
for man—that affection, that something that we call love—has done all 
there is of value in the world. It has civilized mankind; made all the 
poems, painted all the pictures, and composed all the music. Take it 
from the world and we shall be simply wild beasts, far worse than wild 
beasts, for they have affections for each other and for their young.” 
—From IngersolVs argument in the Russell v. Russell case, before 
Martin P. Grey, Vice-Chancellor, at Camden, N. J., June 21, 1899. 

INGERSOLL OVER HIS BROTHER’S GRAVE 

“Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised 
he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, father, friend, died 
where manhood’s morning almost touches noon and while the shadows 
still w'ere falling toward the west. He had not passed on life’s highway 
the stone that marks the highest point; but, being weary for a moment 
he laid down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell 
into that dream'less sleep that kisses down his eye’ids still. While yet 
in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and 
pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sun¬ 
niest hour of all the voyage, while eager vdnds are kissing every sail, to 
dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar 
above a sunken ship. The weather in mid sea or among the breakers of 
the further shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. 
And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every 
moment jeweled with joy, will at its close become a tragedy as sad and 


376 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. 
This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; 
but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all 
heroic souls. He climbed the heights and left all superstition far below, 
while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of the grander day. He 
loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. 
He sided with the weak and with a willing hand gave alms. With loyal 
heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public 
trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A 
thousand times I have heard him quote these words: ‘For Justice, all 
places a temple, and all seasons summer.’ He belieA^ed that happiness 
was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, 
humility the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the 
sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did a loving service to 
bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep tonight beneath a wilder¬ 
ness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks 
of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We 
cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the 
voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night 
of death hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. 
He Avho sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for 
the return of health, whispered with his latest breath: ‘I am better 
now!’ Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fear and tears, 
that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And, now to 
you who have been chosen from among the many men he loved to do the 
last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot con¬ 
tain our love. There was, there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man.” 
—From funeral address, over Eben C. Ingersoll, Representative in 
Congress, at Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown, D. C. 

A VISION OF WAR 

“These heroes are dead. They died for Liberty, they died for us. 
They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag 
they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, 
the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the 
shadow of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the 
windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars, they are 
at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the 
serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers, living and dead. 
Cheers for the liAung, tears for the dead.” 

—From a speech to the Boys in Blue, at Indianapolis, Ind. 

AN AGNOSTIC 

“An agnostic is a person who knows he knoAvs nothing; and believes no 
other person knoAVS any more than he does.” 


ROBERT J. INGRAHAM (1864-1919), Missouri 

RELIGION 

“This mighty mystery I do not understand, but my religion is a good 
thought, never dies, and a good act is eternal. The individual who 
expresses the one, or executes the other, may pass away, hut his influence 
will live forever.” 

THE STOCK YARDS DILEMMA 

At one time in his practice Mr. In^aham represented ten clients, at 
$5,000 each per year, for merely advising them; if he went into court, 
then he got a regular fee.' He was called by the Kansas City Stock Yards, 
one of these clients, to know what to do, as a great fire had taken place, 
when they were obliged to open the gates and let the stock into the streets 
to save the cattle, sheep and hogs from being destroyed by the flames. 
All was consternation, when Mr. Ingraham quietly said “We will have a 
receiver appointed, sell all the stock to the highest bidder, and let each 
owner come in and prove his claims.” This was accordingly done, and 
inside of about two weeks the muddle was settled, all had their money. 

SETTLED QUESTION OF TITLE TO REAL ESTATE 

At another time, a client of his came to him for advice. The client 
had sold an inmate of the Soldier’s Home, in Leavenworth, Kans., a 
vacant piece of property in the suburbs of Kansas City, Mo., for $700 
cash, all the money the old soldier had, and at the request of the old 
soldier had turned oa er the abstract to a friend of the agent, whom the 
buyer of the property did not know. This friend proved not to be an 
expert upon titles, for when the client and agent soon after re-sold the 
ground for the old soldier for $1,000, the attornej^ of the second buyer 
found a deed of trust, or mortgage, on the property, improperly released 
and would not pass the title. The client and agent was in a box, as he 
had chosen the first lawyer for the buyer, and the buyer had paid him 
for his opiuion, which proved as it turned out quite worthless. Finally 
in his desperation the agent went to his attorney, Mr. Ingraham, who 
looked over the abstract and said: “Why man, this title is all right,” and 
by the way, the client had tried in vain to get the last lawyer to pass the title 
on the ground that it was a good title, by adverse possession, and it had 
been referred to Judge Francis M. Black, ex-judge of the Supreme 
Court of Missouri, who coincided with lawyer No. 2, that the title was 
bad. “Well,” said the agent, “I wish you would go with lawyer No. 2 
and myself to see Judge Black.” 

“All right,” said Ingraham. Accordingly all walked over to Judge 
Black’s office. Said Ingraham to Black, “I think this release is all right.” 
The controversy was over a release made by the trustee in the deed of 
trust when prohibited by statute. “For the reason,” said Ingraham, 
“that there is a power of attorney in this deed of trust as shown in the 
abstract. Here it says, the instrument shall be released by the trustee.” 
“But,” said Judge Black, “the statute forbids this.” “I don’t care if it 
does. I do not believe you can take away the right of two sound headed 
men to make a contract for themselves; besides this statute is ex^ post 
facto. It was passed after this contract was made. It is retroactive,” 
said Ingraham. 

“Well, Ingi-aham, I believe you are right upon both of these proposi¬ 
tions,” said Judge Black. The title was accordingly passed. The second 
sale was made and the old soldier never knew of the worry of the agent 
but got his $300 profit and departed a happy man. 


378 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ANOTHER REAL ESTATE CASE 

At another time this same client sold a piece of property consisting 
of a lot with a residence upon it. While the title was being examined 
the house burned, and it was found that the insurance policy had expired. 
The client called Ingraham up about 11 o’clock at night, as he usually 
pored over his cases until after midnight, and asked him how his deal 
stood, who was the loser. Said Ingraham, “Was this a straight purchase, 
not an option, with a good deposit upon the contract?” “Yes,” said the 
agent. “Well, then, the buyer loses. He has bought something. Suppose 
the seller would not deliver the property, and in the meantime he had 
sold the property at a large profit, or struck oil, gold, silver or lead, 
could not the buyer make him deliver the property? Well, what is sauce 
for the goose, is sauce for the gander.” In that deal the seller thought 
he would have to restore the house and left the city, and the buyer 
forfeited his $100.00 earnest money, after consulting his attorney. But 
it is only fair to say in Mr. Ingraham’s behalf, that the agent consulted 
as many as a score of lawyers, and all but one said the seller lost instead 
of the buyer; but the English authorities bear out Mr. Ingraham’s view 
of the law. 

SULLIVAN V. MISSOURI PACIFIC RY. CO., 117 MO., 214 

Mr. Ingraham won great laurels when but twenty-five years of age, in a 
damage case tried in the Circuit Court in K. C., Mo., in 1889, and before 
the Supreme Court in 1893, when but twenty-nine. The facts were, ac¬ 
cording to plaintiff’s evidence, that Mrs. Ellen Sullivan, in crossing the 
Company’s tracks within the corporate limits of Kansas City, was killed by 
defendant’s train, along Front street in said city. She went upon the track, 
was struck by defendant’s cars, the train running at the rate of about 
20 miles per hour; that no bell was ringing nor whistle blowing; that Mrs, 
SuUivan and six or seven other ladfes approached the crossing and all 
started to cross over, four or five of them in advance, followed by a Mrs. 
McKeever and Mrs. Sullivan, a few steps in their rear. Mrs, McKeever 
leading and Mrs. Sullivan following. The ladies in advance crossed the 
track and just as Mrs. McKeever stepped upon it someone exclaimed: 
“The switch engine is coming.” Mrs. McKeever answered, “We wiU 
make it,” and stepped across the track; as she was stepping off the track 
Mrs. SuUivan looked up and down the track, stepped on it, and as she 
did so either tripped against the rail or caught her foot in her dress and 
fell. She was a large woman; she got partly up, fell again, struggled toward 
or onto the south rail and before she could get over it, was struck by the 
engine of the train and died within a minute. The Supreme Court rever¬ 
sed the case on account of Mrs. Sullivan’s contributory negligence, Mr. 
Ingraham got a rehearing before that court, contending that was a ques¬ 
tion for the jury to decide, inasmuch as the ordinance made it unlawful to 
run trains in the corporate limits of the city at a faster rate than six miles 
an hour; that deceased had a right to assume they were law-abiding and 
the probability was, she would have gotten over the track as the evi¬ 
dence showed that the train was some 200 feet from her when she went 
onto the track. The Court reversed themselves and remanded the case 
back to the trial Circuit Court with instructions, holding: 

“Where one who approaches a railway crossing in a city observes an 
engine approaching, and relying on the presumption that the persons 
in charge of the engine would obey an ordinance limiting the rate of speed 
to six miles an hour or less, attempts to make the crossing and is struck 
down and killed by the engine, the question of her contributory negligence 
is one for the jury; that she had a right to presume, unless she knew to 
the contrary, that the train was running not to exceed six miles an hour; 
that even though she was negligent, yet if the defendant’s servants 


GREAT 8AYING8 BY GREAT LAWYERS 


379 


discovered, or could have discovered by the use of ordinary care, her 
condition and its danger, and could have avoided injuring her by the use 
of ordinary care and failed to do so, her negligence was no defense to^the 
action.” 

The case was remanded with the above instructions, and then settled 
by the defendant Company paying the judgment first rendered by the 
Circuit Court. 

The compiler of this work was in Jefferson City just after this victory 
by Mr. Ingraham and Judges Brace, Gant and Black each said to him in 
separate conference and of their own accord, virtually praiseworthy words 
as follows: “You have a very bright lawyer in Kansas City. He is bound 
to make his mark. We have never heard a better argument than he made 
before the full bench on the re-hearing of Sullivan v. The Missouri Pacific 
Ry. Co. He is a young man, too.” On being asked who was alluded to, 
each answered: “A young man by the name of Ingraham.” 

THE CUDAHY CASE 

Another important matter was settled by Mr. Ingraham in Chicago, 
for Jack Cudahy, in which he got for his client a settlement of $1,500,000 
and a fee for himself of $75,000. 

Mr. Ingraham and Mr. Cudahy went to Chicago to have a conference 
with the attorneys for the other heirs of Mr. Cudahy, who had recently 
died, leaving a will. Jack Cudahy agreeing to pay Mr. Ingraham one-haif 
of 1 % of whatever sum he could effect a settlement for. After the attor¬ 
neys for the heirs had been in conference, with the leading counsel for the 
estate, and with the other lawyers for other heirs, leading counsel spoke 
up and said: “Mr. Ingraham, you are barred by the statute of hmitations, 
as more than two years has elapsed since Michael Cudahy died. You 
are out of court.” “Oh,” said Ingraham, “we don’t claim anything under 
the will. We claim under an agreement between the heirs.” “Well,” 
said leading counsel, turning to the bell-weather among the heirs, “Is 
there any agreement between the heirs?” “Well, yes,” said this heir, 
“but I have that agreement at home locked up. They will never see 
it.” “Now, look here, said leading counsel, there are going to be no cards 
played under the table. You bring that agreement in tomorrow morning 
at 10 o’clock. Tills conference stands adjourned till that time.” 

The next morning, after reading over the agreement, which Jack had 
been unable to locate, the whole matter was settled, under the terms of 
the agreement of the heirs, whereby Jack got $1,500,000 and Ingraham 
his fee of $75,000. It may be added here, that Mr. Ingraham told the 
■writer hereof that that was the easiest fee he ever earned. 

JULES C. ROSENBERGER’S TRIBUTE 

“Sacrifice of self was the pre-eminent quality in Mr. Ingraham.” 

— Memorial Proceedings, May 17, 1919. 

EDWIN C. MESERVEY’S ESTIMATE 

“In the trial of law suits he was, in my opinion, one of the ablest that 
we have ever had at our bar. In the presentation of a case to the court 
or to the jury he was clear, convincing, forcible, logical; and without any 
attempt at rhetorical display, he showed a sincerity which carried con¬ 
viction both to the court and jury.”— Idem. 

PRANK HAGERMAN’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“I knew him as a true man and a great lawyer of my home city. Quiet, 
forceful, energetic, studious and honest he attained a professional height 
towards which any young man can always longingly look. His character 
was always of the highest. The confidence of courts and of his clients 


380 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ill him was unbounded; his ability to judge human nature was great. 
The beating of the public pulse was always heard and understood by him. 
He y^as unceasing in his labors, but careless of its effect upon his physique. 
In the end, the strain was too great for his physical endurance. I knew 
him intimately, and loved and respected him.”— Frank Hagerman, Idem. 

TESTIMONY OF E. R. DURHAM—A PARTNER 

“Mr. Ingraham had a broad sympathy and wonderful generosity 
and charity. He would go a long way to help a friend in trouble or in 
need. I remember one time that one of Mr. Tichenor’s clients (Mr. 
Ingraham had read law in the latter’s office), a very highly respected 
citizen of Kansas City, had gotten into trouble. He was well along in 
years. He came to Mr. Ingraham for help, as many of these old clients 
did. Mr. Ingraham conferred with his old preceptor. Mr. Tichenor 
said ‘Let him pay the penalty!’ Mr. Ingraham could not see it that way, 
signed a note at the bank with this old client, and saved him from commit¬ 
ting suicide; though Mr. Ingraham had to pay the note, when in bed 
suffering with paralysis, of which he died, after lingering for two years. 
The client whom he saved is living yet. His charity was again illustrated 
in his taldng care of a brother lawyer’s life insurance, when in financial 
distress, for money embezzled. This money he never got back, and did 
not expect he would. He wanted nothing said of either of these charitable 
acts. His charities were secret, not like the Pharisee. In fact, his charity 
and humane acts were chief characteristics.” 

O. H. DEAN’S TESTIMONY 

“Mr. Ingraham was much more than a diligent and capable member of 
our profession. I regarded him one of the brightest and best trained 
lawyers at our bar; strong as a trial lawyer, strong in the Appellate 
courts, but equally capable as a wise counsellor in all business and 
commercial matters; he was most conscientious in his work; would not 
give opinions, nor would he try cases until he was well prepared. His 
clients’ troubles and difficultiss became his; in his anxiety to protect 
them, he forgot himself. * * * jje had highly pledged himself to 

the work to which he had dedicated his life. He saw with clear vision 
what it meant; he saw its dignity and worth. He saw that without 
law justly and wisely written, declared and administered there could be 
no justice, no peace, no safety, no prosperity, no progress. He saw that 
all our law—constitutional, statutory and municipal, in the narrow^ 
sense of that word, as well as the law declared by our courts, had almost 
wholly their beginnings wdth and were written by members of our pro¬ 
fession, and upon them, therefore, devolved not only the framing, the 
interpretation and the enforcement of the laws, but the creation of a 
respect for its administration. He discussed with me more than once 
the action of the Cincinnati mob, indignant at the mal-administration of 
the criminal law in that city, that tore down the courthouse, set fire to 
and burned the records, that created a scandalous riot. * * * jjg 

felt that the w^k he was engaged in was the highest and noblest to which 
any man could consecrate his life; if we failed to command the highest 
respect and confidence, and exert a profound infiuence, it was not be¬ 
cause of the work itself but because of our failure to perform that work 
as we axe bound to by every requirement of our profession to do. Was 
he not right? Should not the lawyer by reason of his high calling be 
among the princes of the earth?” 

—Memorial Proceedings, Kansas City, Mo., May 17, 1919. 

WANT OF EXERCISE CAUSED HIS EARLY DEATH 

“It is my judgment that Jay Ingi-aham’s sickness was due to lack of 
physical recreation. I never knew him to take exercise of that kind. 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


381 


He gave all his energy to slavish devotion to business. He paid a severe 
penalty. Stricken in the prime of his manhood, he was a patient sufferer 
for about two years from an affliction that confined him to his bed, and 
separated him from even glimpses of his fellow members of the bar who 
loved him so well. Then on March 23, 1919, came the 
‘Sleep that knits up the ravel’d sleeve of care, 
and closes the span of life.’ 

“It came to Jay Ingraham at the meridian of his life, a life that promised 
long years of usefulness. I drop here affection’s tear to my departed 
friend. Death has relieved his suffering. He died with full belief in a 
future life. At the gateway of Heaven he was separated from his grief- 
stricken family and a multitude of friends. His soul passed into the Great 
Beyond. 

‘Our spirits loved and love him still.’ ” 

— Thomas R. Morrow, of the Kansas City Bar, May 17, 1919. 

W. H. H. PIATT’S SPRIG OF ROSEMARY 

“As a lawyer he never prostituted the franchise granted him as a 
lawyer by society, to subject society to any scheme, law or design cal¬ 
culated to work to the benefit of a special interest, class or clan as against 
the general interests of society or against the underlying fundementals of 
our form of government. I merely lay a sprig of rosemary at his bier. 
He made justice his only temple and truth and sincerity his only priest.” 
— Memorial, May 17, 1919. 

JUDGE W. O. THOMAS’S ESTIMATE 

“I do not believe that Jay IngTaham ever took a case which would 
put him in opposition to the rights of society, against his love for the 
people, his desire to see that laws control, that people’s rights were con¬ 
served. * * * At a time when I needed help, when I could give 

nothing in return. Jay Ingraham helped me, and it is this personal element 
and personal loss that makes me feel so keenly the removal of this great¬ 
hearted, strong, noble man who has so untimely passed to his reward.” 

■—Memorial Proceedings. 

R. E. BALL’S OPINION 

“Ingraham was a fighter and an exponent of the faith in his absolute 
refusal to represent an unconscionable cause. It was the natural result 
of that quality in him to see that justice and the right was done. At 
one time he was in a case opposed to me, and after he got into it he became 
convinced that his client vras wrong and he withdi-ew; he did that because 
he respected himself and he respected the right and justice of the cause; 
so I think that his outspoken, straight out antagonism under all circum¬ 
stances, of what he conceived to be wrong, ought to be emphasized as 
one of his very best qualities.”—Ma?/ 17, 1919, Memorial Proceedings. 

TRIBUTE OF J. G. L. HARVEY 

“I think one of the greatest tributes ever paid to Mr. Ingraham was 
that of Mayor Neff. Mr. Neff was a Republican, and Mr. Ingraham was 
a Democrat, and held over as City Counselor from the preceding Dem¬ 
ocratic Administration; but Mr. Neff saw his worth and retained him 
for about a year as his legal adviser. * * * j^. always seemed to 

me that his predominating charactc^ristic was loyalty—loyalty to the cause 
he represented, and loyalty to his friends. * * * Be occupied a 

peculiar position in our midst, and we shall not soon see his like again.” 
— Memorial Proceedings, May 17, 1919. 


JAMES IREDELL (1751-1799), North Carolina 


THE RELIGIOUS TEST 

“Every person in the least conversant with the history of mankind 
knows what dreadful mischiefs have been committed by religious persecu¬ 
tion. Under the color of religious tests, the utmost cruelties have been 
exercised. Those in power have generally considered all wisdom centered 
in themselves, that they alone had the right to dictate to the rest of man¬ 
kind, and that all opposition to their tenets was profane and impious. 
The consequence of this intolerant spirit has been that each church has 
in turn set itself up against every other, and persecutions and wars of 
the most implacable and bloody nature have taken place in every part 
of the world. America has set an example to mankind to think more 
rationally—that a man may be of religious sentiments differing from our 
own, without being a bad member of society. The principles of toleration, 
to the honor of this age, are doing away with those errors and prejudices 
which have so long prevailed even in the most intolerant countries. In 
Roman Catholic lands, principles of moderation are adopted, which would 
have been spurned a century or two ago. It will be fatal, indeed, to find, 
at the time when examples of toleration are set even by arbitrary govern¬ 
ments, that this country, so impressed with the highest sense of liberty, 
should adopt principles on this subject that were narrow, despotic, and 
illiberal.” 

—Debate in the Convention on that article in the Constitution in 
regard to it. 

Iredell was born at Lewes, England; emigrated to N. C., about 1768; 
admitted to bar, 1775; became prominent as a lawyer; Judge of the State 
Superior Court, 1777; Atty. Gen’l of State, 77-79; from 1790 till his death 
was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U. S. 


BOOKS 

“Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the 
most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures. It lasts 
when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recrea¬ 
tions are gone. It will last you until your death. It will make your 
hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”— Anthony Frollope. 



W. W. IRWIN (1803-1856), Minnesota 

APPEAL TO JURY 


“If you are to yield to the tremendous pressure urged upon you to 
tear down the rules of law and common sense, then is the only bulwark 
of American and civilized liberty washed from its foundation. If fa¬ 
naticism and the testimony of this vile murderer, conducted to the witness 
stand with such pomp, instead of the calm analysis of the evidence is to 
govern you, then tell your artists to take down from the domes of your 
court-houses that angel of justice, and to put in her place the diseased 
form of a hag from hell. Let her blink behind the bandage, only put on 
to dupe the public; take down the flag represented by the red, white, and 
blue; the red emblematic of the blood of the Divine Martyr, the white 
emblematic of the immaculate purity of His spirit and life, the blue 
representing the skies to which He ascended; and bid the officers lift 
on high your created, polished, black field of hellish perjury, on which is 
painted the form of the human tiger. These figures, it seems to me, are 
well borne out by the calm consideration of this case. Your Honor, I 
have done. Gentlemen, I, leave my client in your hands for judgment, 
conscious that you, gentlemen of the jury, are in the hands of God, 
and no power can harm or mar, hold or control, your verdict. You are 
the conscience of this nation. Beware that you do not betray it.” 

—In the Harry Hayward Murder Trial. 


PEN PORTRAIT OF CARLYLE 

“He looked, I thought, the prophet; his clothes loose and careless, for 
comfort, not show; the shaggy, unkempt gray thatch of hair; the long 
head, the bony, almost fleshless face of one who fasted and suffered; the 
tyrannous overhanging cliff forehead; the firm, heavy mouth and out- 
thrust‘challenging chin—the face of a fighter; force everywhere, brains 
and will dominant; strength redeemed by the deepest eyes, most human, 
beautiful; by turns piercing, luminous, tender, gleaming, pathetic, too, 
for the lights were usually veiled in brooding sadness, broken oftenest by 
a look of dumb despair and regret; a strong, sad face, the saddest face I 
ever studied—all petrified, so to speak, in tearless misery as of one who 
had come to week by his own fault and was tortured by remorse—the 
worm that dieth not.”— Frank Harris. 



JOHN JAY (1745-1829), New York 


PATIENCE AND RESIGNATION 

“My robe may become useless, or it may not. I am resigned to either 
event. He who governs aU makes no mistakes, and a firm belief of this 
would save us from many. * * * The reflection that the majority 

of electors were for me is a pleasing one; that injustice has taken place 
does not surprise me, and I hope will not affect you very sensibly. * * * 

A few years more will put us all in the dust, and it will then be of more 
importance to me to have governed myself, than to have governed the 
State.” 

—John Jay uyon learning of the fraudulent 'practices by 'which he 
teas cheated out of the governorship of New York. 

Qualifications of a Judge; “Firmness, integrity, and caution.” 
—John Jay. 

ROBES FOR THE JUDGES—WHY ADOPTED 

Before Jay took office on the Supreme Bench of the U. S. a curious 
discussion arose concerning the habiliments of the judges while on the 
bench. By some the scholarly gown was preferred; others advocated 
the classical toga; others desired the more sacred stole (a long loose 
garment reaching to the feet). But it was a question of the English 
judicial wig, which is associated with Blackstone, Bacon, Coke, Mans¬ 
field, BuUer and other English judges, over which the most exciting 
controversy arose. To the use of this appendage Jay most emphatically 
objected. The subject was discussed dehors judicial circles. Hamilton, 
then Secretary of the Treasury, who favored the methods, costumes 
and fashions of England, strongly sustained, not only the judicial vdg, 
but the toga; while Jefferson, ‘whose simple manners and opposition to 
the aristocratic tendencies of the federal leader, exhibited theipselves 
in the combing of the hair out of the fashionable pigtail, discarding 
hair-powder, wearing pantaloons instead of breeches, fastening the shoes 
with strings instead of elaborate buckles,’ indulged in denunciations of 
all unnecessary apparel for the judges. He said to Hamilton when the 
subject was under discussion: ‘I have been reading your letter to Jay 
concerning the apparel of the judges of the Supreme Court.’ ‘Well, what 
do you think of it?’ ‘That I have no patience with the prevailing custom 
of imitating everything English in our Democratic institutions, particu¬ 
larly in the organization of our courts. If we must have peculiar garbs 
for the judges, I think the gown is the most appropriate, but for Heaven’s 
sake discard the monstrous wig, which makes the English judges look 
like rats peeping through bunches of oakum,’ was the reply.” 

•— L. B. Proctor's ^American Lawyer,' Apr., 1896. 

THE MAJORITY—EVIL AND IGNORANT 

“The majority of every people are deficient both in virtue and knowl¬ 
edge.”— Said by Jay. 

JAY WROTE FIVE ARTICLES OF THE FEDERALIST 

Jay wrote the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 63rd papers of the “Federalist.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


385 


CHISHOLM VS. GEORGIA 

“The most famous find important Case in Jay’s time was Chisholm 
V. Georgia, in which the Chief Justice held that a State of the Union 
was suable in the Supreme Court, at the instance of a private citizen 
of a sister State. From this judgment Mr. Justice Iredell dissented, and 
time as well as the XI. Amendment to the Constitution sustains the 
dissent. The reasoning of the court is, however, unanswerable, altho 
the amendment forbade suit at the instance of a private citizen. For, 
say what we wi 1, the States are not sovereign in unlimited sense, and 
when we admit this the result is sorx^ething less than soverignty. The 
Nation is supreme, ^s was shown in 1861, and if the Nation is supreme 
the individual States composing the Nation cannot be. The famous de¬ 
cision of McCulloch V. Maryland, 1819, is largely a restatement of Jay’s- 
opinion of 1793, and it is on the opinion of Chisholm v; Georgia that 
Jay’s claim to greatness as a judge must rest.” 

—James Scott Brown —‘Gh Am Lawyers,' Vol. 1, 286-7. 

(Jefferson, in speaking of the Dartmouth College case, said: “To 
produce 150 pages of more recondite and irreconcilable contradiction, 
ohscurio vera, involvens, than is found in Marshall’s opinion in the Dart¬ 
mouth College case. There is more learning, more real practical knowledge 
of constitutional law, more solid movement of argument, in Jay’s opinion 
\ in Chisholm v. Georgia than can, by the most severe study, be found 
in Marshall’s vaunted opinion of the N. H. College case. The truth 
is, Webster took Marshall by storm in that ease. There is not a judge 
in America who knows how to rule by it, or who can decide what laws 
are, or what are not ex post facto.") 

JAY’S TREATY 

Jay went, at the instance of Washington, in 1794, to England to, negoti¬ 
ate a treaty between that Nation and the U. S. By it American citizens 
received an award of $10,245,000; but it made Jay very unpopular in 
this country because it did not give our people all they thought they ought 
to have. James Savage, once President of the Mass. Hist. Society, told his 
grandchildren that he remembered seeing these words chalked in large 
letters around the enclosure of Robt. Treat Payne:—“Damn John Jay! 
Damn everyone that won’t damn John Jay! ! Damn everyone that won’t 
put lights in the windows and sit up all night damning John Jay! ! !” 
But of his unpopularity Jay said: “Calumny is seldom durable; it will 
in time yield to truth.” James Parton says of the Treaty:—“It pro¬ 
cured the surrender of the English posts (some seven in number,) inaugu¬ 
rated the policy that naturally issued in arbitration, made some slight 
beginnings of reciprocity and free tn.de, and postponed inevitable war 
for 18 years.” And Judson Harmon, of Cincinnati, O., said at the Jay 
Banquet, in Kansas City Mo., Nov. 14, 1911:—“If John Jay had not 
gone to England and consummated that treaty it would be difficult 
to tell what the territory that now comprises the U. S. would be. Another 
war might have followed. And the outcome of a war, at that time, is 
difficult to imagine now. John Jay saved the U. S.” 

ELBERT HUBBARD ON JAY 

“Peter Jay, John Jay’s father, paid Benjamin Kissam, the eminent 
lawyer, 200 pounds ($1,000) to take John Jay as apprentice for five years. 
In ins intellect there was not the flash of Hamilton, nor the creative 
quality possessed by Jefferson, nor the large all-rounclness of Franklin, 
but hediad something better than genius, and that is common sense.” 


386 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


HILDRETH ON JAY’S TREATY 

“In 1794 when Washington wanted a special minister to England, 
he chose Chief Justice Jay. In point of Revolutionary services, only the 
President stood upon higher ground; nor could any person, except the 
Vice-President pretend to a place upon the same level. In lofty dis¬ 
interestedness, in unyielding integrity, in superiority of the illusions of 
passion, no one of the great men of the Revolution approached so near 
to Washington. Profound knowledge of the law, inflexible sense of justice 
and solidity of judgment, had especially marked him out for the office 
which he held. Having played a very active part in a State, the seat of 
hostilities during the whole struggle, he knew what war was, and dreaded 
it accordingly. One of the ministers who negotiated the treaty, and 
afterward Secretary of Foreign Affairs, he was perfectly familiar with 
all the grounds of the controversy as between the two nations. Though 
on questions of principle perfectly unyielding, in matters of interest 
and expediency he knew the wisdom of giving up a part rather to lose 
the whole. The only serious objection was his judicial position; but 
even that gave additional dignity ta the mission, and in a crisis so im¬ 
portant the objection lost much of its weight.” 

— 1 Hildreth's Hist. U. S. {2nd Series), 4-88. 


WEBSTER’S FIRST MEETING WITH JEREMIAH MASON 

“Mr. Webster first met Jeremiah Mason on the occasion of a criminal 

trial. A certain Col.-a Democrat of note, had been put on trial 

on a charge of counterfeiting. The case against him was more than 
serious, for many acts of passing counterfeit money had been brought 
home to him. The Democrats, however, were very anxious that the 
colonel should be acquitted. Mason was secured as the prisoner’s counsel, 
and money raised to support the defence. On the very eve of the trial 
the Attorney-General, who was addicted to drinking, failed the prose¬ 
cution; whereupon Mr. Webster was called upon to act in his place. 
Mason had heard of his promise, but remarked in his plain way that 
‘he had heard similar things of young men before,’ and did not disturb 
himself about his antagonist. He soon found out that he had no common 
adversary to deal with, Webster ‘came down upon him,’ as he said, 
‘like a thunder-shower.’ The prisoner was, indeed, acquitted; but this 
was, in Mr. Mason’s own opinion, rather owing to the political leaning 
of the jury than to the superiority of the defence.” 

— Harvey's Reminiscences of Webster, 58. 


JUDGE STORY OFFERED TO HELP WEBSTER IN HIS HAYNE 

REPLY 

“Judge Story called on Mr. Webster on the evening previous to the 
delivery of the speech in reply to Robt. Y. Hayne, and, after expressing 
some anxiety as to the result of the debate, offered to aid in looking up 
materials to be used in his reply. Mr. Webster thanked him, and said; 
‘Give yourself no uneasiness. Judge Story; I will grind him as fine as a 
pinch of snuff!’ ” — Harvey's ^Reminiscences of Webster,' 156. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826), Virginia 


PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 

“Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state and persuasion, 
reli^ous or political; Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all 
nations, entangling alliances with none; The support of the State govern¬ 
ments in all their rights, as the most competent administration for our 
domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican ten¬ 
dencies; The preservation of the General Government in its whole con¬ 
stitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety 
abroad; A jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and 
safe corrective of abuses, which are lopped by the sword of revolution 
where peaceable remedies are unprovided; Absolute acquiescence in the 
decisions of the majority, the vital principles of republics, from which 
there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent 
of despotism; A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and 
for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; The su¬ 
premacy of the civil over the military authority; Economy in public 
expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; The Honest payment of 
our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; Encouragement 
of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; The diffusion of in¬ 
formation, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; 
Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of persons under 
the protection of the Habeas Corpus; And trial by juries impartially 
selected. 

“These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before 
us, and guided our steps, through an age of Revolution and Reformation. 
* * * They should be of the creed of our political faith, the text of civil 
instruction, the touchstone by v'^hich to try the services of those we trust; 
and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us 
hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to 
peace, liberty and safety.” 

— Thomas Jefferson—From 1st Inaugural Address, March If, 1801 
NAPOLEON 

‘ Bonaparte was a lion in th'^ field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, 
calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, 
knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, 
and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.” 

— Thomas Jefferson in letter to John Adams. 

LUTHER MARTIN 

‘ Martin should be committed as particeps criminis of Burr’s. * * * He 
is an unprincipled and impudent Federal bull-dog.”—TAomas Jefferson. 

GEORGE WYTHE 

“No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than George 
Wythe. His virtue was of the purest tint; his integrity indexible and his 
justice exact; of warm patriotism, and devoted as he was to liberty and 
the natural and equal rights of men, he might truly be called the Cato 
of his country, without the avarice of the Roman, for a more disinter¬ 
ested person never lived.”— To John Saunderson, 1820. 


388 


GREAT HAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


PATRICK HENRY 

“You ask some account of Mr. Henry’s mind, information and manners, 
in 1759-60, when I first became acquainted with him. We met at Nathan 
Dandridge’s, in Hanover, about Christmas of that winter, and passed, 
perhaps, a fortnight together at the revelries of the neighborhood and 
season. His manners haY^e something of the coarseness of the society 
he had frequented; his passion was fiddling, dancing and pleasantry. 
He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him. The occasion, 
perhaps, as much as his idle disposition which might give the measure 
of his mind or information. Opportuntity was not wanting, because Mr. 
John Campbell was there, who had married Mrs. Spottsvmod, the sister 
of Col. Dandridge. He was, a man of science, and often introduced 
conversations on scientific subjects. Mr. Henry had a little before 
broke up his store, or rather, it had broke him up, and within three months 
after he came to Williamsburg for his license, he told me, I tliink, he had 
read law not more than six weeks.”— To Williavi Wirt, 1815. 

JAMES MADISON 

“My successor, to the purest principles, of republican patriotism, adds 
a .wisdom and a foresight second to no man on earth.” (To Gen. Kosi- 
usco,^ ,1810). “He is the ablest statesman.” (To John Melish, 1817). 
“Such a. mind as his, fraught with information and with matter for 
reflection, can never know ennui.'" (To John Adames, 1817). “You must 
take up your pen against Hamilton. You know, the ingenuity of liis 
talents and there is not a person but yourself v/ho can foil him. For 
Heaven’s sake, then, take up your pen, and do not desert the public 
cause altogether.”— To Madison, 1798. 

WASHINGTON 

“His mind was great and powerful, without being of the v'ery first 
order; Ins penetration strong, though not so acute as that of Newt»n, 
Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. 
He was slow.in operation, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common 
remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from counsels of war, 
where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and cer¬ 
tainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if 
deranged, during the course of the action, if any member of Iris plan was 
dislocated by sudden cricumstances, he was sIoyv in readjustment. The 
consequence was that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an 
enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He Avas incapable of* fear, 
meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the 
strongest feature of his cliaracter was prudence, never acting until every 
circumstance, every consideration, was maturely v/eighed, refraining 
if he saw doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, 
whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice 
the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest of con¬ 
sanguinity, of fr endship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He 
Avas, indeed, in eAmry sense of the words, a Avise, a good, and a great man. 
His temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and 
resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If, 
however, it broke its bounds, he AA^as tremendous in his Avrath. In his 
expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to what¬ 
ever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary 
projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. 

‘His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated 
every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it; 
His person was fine, his stature exactly Avhat one would wish, his deport- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


389 


merit easy, ,erect and noble; the best' horseman of his age, and the most 
graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although thei circle 
of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free 
share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, 
possessing neither copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. In public, 
when called upon for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and em¬ 
barrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct 
style. This he had acquired by conversation vdth the world, for his 
education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic to 
which he added surveying at a later day His time was employed in 
action chiefly, reading literature, and that only in agriculture and English 
history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, journal¬ 
izing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours 
within doors. 

On the whole his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, 
in a few points indifferent; and it was truly said, that never did nature 
and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place 
him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited 
from man an everlasting remembrance. For this was the singular destiny 
and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an 
arduous war for the estabhshment of its independence; of,conducting 
its councils tlnough the birth of a government, new in its forms and 
principles until it has settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and 
of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil 
and military, of wdiich the history of the wmrld furnishes no other example. 
How then can it be perilous for you to take such a man on your shoulders? 
1 am satisfied the great body of the republicans think of him as I do. 
We were, indeed, dissatisfied with his ratification of the British treaty. 
But this w^as short 1 ved. We knew his honesty, the wiles with which 
he was encompassed, and that age had already begun to relax the firm¬ 
ness of his purposes; and 1 am convinced he is more deeply seated in the 
love and gratitude of the republicans, than in the pharisaica' homage 
of the federal monarchists. For he was no monarchist from preference of 
his judgment. The soundness of that gave correct views of; the rights 
of man, and his severe justice devoted him to them. He has often de¬ 
clared to me that he considered our constitution as an experiment on 
the practicabi ity of republican government, and wdth what dose of 
liberty man could be trusted for his owm good; that he was determined 
the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop 
of his blood in support of it. * * * I felt on his death, with my countrymen, 
that verily a great man hath fa’len this day in Israel.” 

— To Dr Walter Jones, 

SOME NOTABLE SAYINGS 

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”— Motto on Jefferson s seal. 

. “Union is the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad.” 
—From 1st Inaugural. 

“1 have swmrn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every 
form of tyranny over the mind of man.”— To Benj. Rush, 1800. ■ 

‘ The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand 
of force may destroy, but cannot disjoint them.” 

—From Memorial Address to Geo. III. 

“Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.” • 

—From Address to Geo. HI. 

“Nature intended me for the tranquil })ursuits of science by rendering 
them my supreme delight.”— From a letter. 


390 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“Were it left for me to decide, whether we should have a government 
without newspapers, or newspapers vdthout a government, I should not 
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” 

—From letter from Paris, on Shay s Rebellion. 

“The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies. 

— To Dr. Geo. Logan, 1816, as to Federal slanders. 

“That government is best which governs least.” 

“No government can be maintained without the principles of fear as 
well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former 
only.”— From Isf Inaugural, Mar. If, 1801. 

TEN PRECEPTS OF ADVICE 

1. “Never put off til tomorrow what you can do today.” 

2. “Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.” 

3. “Never spend your money before you have it.” 

4. “Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will 
be dear to you.” 

5. “Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.” 

6. “We never repent of eating too little.” 

7. “Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.” 

8. “How much pain have cost us the evils which never happened.” 

9. “Take things by their smooth handle.” 

10. “When angry, count ten, before you speak: if very angrj% an 
hundred.” 


LAWYERS TALK TOO MUCH 

“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be other¬ 
wise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, 
whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the 
hour? That one hundred and fifty lawyers shou'd do business together 
ought not to be expected.” 

— Jefferson's ‘Autobiography,' speaking of the brevity of Franklin 
and Washington, in debate—neither of whom ever spoke over ten 
minutes. 


MAKING IT LEGAL 

If a man were to give another an orange he would simply say: “1 
give you this orange.” But when the transaction is intrusted to a lawyer 
to put in writing he adopts this form: 

“I herewith give and convey to you, all and singular, my estate and in¬ 
terest, right, title, claim and advantages of and in said orange, together 
with all its rind, juice, pulp and pips, and all rights and advantages 
therein, with full power to bite, cut, suck and otherwise eat the same or 
give the same away with or without the rind, skin, juice, pulp or pips, 
anything hereinbefore or hereinafter or in any other deed or deeds, 
instrument or instruments, of whatever nature or kind soever to the 
contrary in any wise notwithstanding.” — The Chicago News. 



GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


391 


BLACKSTONE 

“Blackstone, whose book, although the most elegant and best digested 
of our catalog, has been perverted more than all others, to the degeneracy 
of legal science. A student finds there a smattering of everytMng, and 
his indolence persuades him that if he understands that book, he is 
master of the whole body of the law. The distinction between these and 
those who have drawn their stores from the deep mines of Coke and 
Littleton, seem well imderstood, even by the appellation of Blackstone 
lawyers to the ephemeral insects of the law.”— To Judge Tyler, 1812. 

JOHN ADAMS 

“He never acts upon any system, but is governed by his feelings of the 
moment. He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and 
probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill 
which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the Being 
who made him. He is profound in h’s views, accurate in his judgment, 
except when knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment. 
He is so amiable that I pronounce you will love Mm, if ever you become 
acquainted vdth Mm. He would be, as he was, a great man in Congress.” 

— To James Madison, 1787. 

GALLATIN 

“The ablest man except the President (Madison) who was ever in the 
administration.” (Gallatin was .Jefferson’s Sec. of the Treasury.) 

— To. Wm. Wirt, 1811. 

WHAT WE OWE TO THOMAS JEFFERSON 

1. The Declaration of Independence, 

2 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, 

3. The University of Virginia, 

4. Opposition to Slavery, 

5. The decimal system of American coinage,—the dime, dollar, and 
eagle, 

6. Keeping wigs from the heads of our Judges, 

7. Removing in Virginia the laws of primogeniture and entail, 
and the abolishment of the Enghsh estabhshed church, 

8 Untiring efforts to establish a system of common schools for the 
free education of the masses—in wMch he failed because of insufficient 
support, 

9. The invention of an improved plow, and the revolving office-chair, 

10. The introduction of rice cultivation in the U. S., 

11. The first manual on Parliamentary Law in this country which 
he wrote and published, 

12. Driving the Algerine pirates from the seas 

13. The Doctrine that all governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, 

14. The acquisition from Napoleon of the Lomsiana Territory, 

15. The Lewis and Clarke Expedition, opening up the vast territory 
between the Valley of the Mississippi and jthe Pacific, 

16. His untiring labors in behalf of science, natural history, agriculture, 
culture and education. 


SIR GEORGE JESSEL (1824-1883), England 

HIS INCOME AS A LAWYER 

“Before his elevation to the bench, Jessel’s income at the bar was 
S125,000 per year.”—7 Green Bag, 383. 

QUALIFICATION AS JUDGE 

“In swiftness and sureness of intuition, in the tenacity of memory, 
in healthy superiority to mere precedent, and in masterful grasp of facts, 
Jessel presented a combination of qualities to be found in no other equity 
judge in this country.’’—7 Green Bag, 283. 

QUICK IN DECISION 

“Mr. James Bryce, in his biographical sketch, states that Sir George 
Jessel, late master of the rolls, during his long career on the bench but 
upon two occasions did he fail to decide the matter presented to him at 
the termination of the argument.’’ 

—Frederic R. Courdert's “Certainty and Justice." 

COURTS OF EQUITY 

“The rule of Courts of Equity are not like the rules of the common law, 
supposed to have been established from time immemorial. They have 
been established from time to time, altered, improved, and refined from 
time to time. , In. many cases we know the names of the chancellors who 
invented them —^as, for example, the separate use of a married woman, 
the restraint on alienation, the modern rule against perpetuities, and the 
rules of equitable waste. We can name the chancellors who first invented 
them, and state the date. The older precedents in equity are of very 
little value; the doctrines are progressive, refined, and improved.’’ 

—Re Hallett's Estate —Law Reports, 13 Chancery Div., 710 — 
per Sir George Jessel, Judge. 


THOMAS CORWIN 

“We have on the platform in these times ro speaker of the type of 
Thomas Corwin. He had remarkable influence wlieiiever he participated 
in debate in the House of Representatives. On the stump or hustings he 
would draw audiences away from Henry Clay or any of the famous 
speakers of the time. I sometimes wonder if our more experienced and 
more generally educated audiences of today would be swayed by Corwin’s 
methods. He bad in the highest degree every element of effective speech. 
He could put his audience in tears or hilarious laughter or arouse cheers. 
He told more stories and told them better than anyone else, and indulged 
freely in what is called Fourth of July exaggeration. He would relieve 
a logical presentation which was super!) and unanswerable by a i^hetorical 
flight of fancy, or by infectious humor.’’ 

—C. M. Depcw’s ^Memories of 80 Years,' 321. 



SIR WILLIAM JONES (1746-1794), England 

WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE 

What constitutes a State? 

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate; 

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; 

Not starred and spangled courts, 

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 

No:—men, high-minded men, 

With powers as far above all brutes endued 
In forest, brake, or den. 

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude— 

Men who their duties know. 

But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain. 

Prevent the long aimed blow. 

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain — 

These constitute a state; 

And sovereign law, that state’s collected will, 

O ’er thrones and globes elate 
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill. 

Smit by her scared frown. 

The fiend. Dissension, like a vapor sinks; 

And e’en the all-dazzling crown 
Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks: 

Such was the heaven-loved isle. 

Than Lesbos fairer and the Cretan shore! 

No more shall freedom smile? 

Shall Britons languish, and be men no more? 

Since all must life resign. 

Those sweet rewards wliich decorate the brave 
’T is folly to decline, 

And steal inglorious to the silent grave. 

THE SCIENCE OF JURISPRUDENCE 

“The great science of jurisprudence, like that of the universe, consists 
of many subordinate systems, all of which are connected by nice links, 
and beautiful dependencies; and each of them, as I have fully persuaded 
myself, is reducible to a few plain elements, either the wise maxims 
of national policy and general convenience, or the positive rules of our fore¬ 
fathers, which are seldom deficient in vdsdom or utility. If law be a science 
and really deserve so sublime a name, it must be founded on principle 
and claim an exalted rank in the empire of reason; but if it be merely 
an unconnected series of decrees and ordinances, its use may remain, 
though its dignity be lessened, and he will become the greatest lawyer 
who has the strongest habitual or artificial memory. In practice, law 
certainly employs two of the mental faculties; reason, in the primary 
investigation and decision of points entirely new; and memory, in trans¬ 
mitting to us the reason of sage and learned men, to which our own 
ought invariably to yield, if not from becoming modesty, at least from a 
just attention to that object for which all laws are framed, and all so¬ 
cieties instituted, the good of mankind.’’— From his Essay on Bailments. 


394 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE GREATEST MAN 

“If I am asked, who is the greatest man, I answer, the best. And 
if I am required to say who is the best, I reply, he that has deserved 
most of his fellow creatures.” 

THE PERPETUITY OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS 

“The sum of my opinion is that while all the American people under¬ 
stand the modern art of war, and learn jurisprudence by serving in ro¬ 
tation upon grand and petit juries, their liberty is secure, and they will 
certainly flourish most when their public affairs are best administered by 
their Senate and Councils. I cannot think a monarchy or an oligarchy 
stronger in substance, whatever they may be in appearance, than a 
popular government. * * * I shall not die in peace without visiting your 
United States for a few months before the close of the eighteenth century. 
May I find wisdom and goodness in your Senate, arms and judicature, 
which are power, in your Commons, and blessings of wealth and peace 
equally distributed among all.”— 2 Wynne's Eunomus, 359, note. 

WORKS OF CICERO 

“No man ever perused the works of Cicero without improving in 
eloquence and wisdom.” 

SHARSWOOD ON JONES 

“Of English biographies there is no one, it occurs to me, better for a 
lawyer to read at frequent intervals, for the purpose of getting a vivid 
picture of a truly great m’nd, in the midst of the most stirring scenes, 
ever intent upon its own cultivation and advancement, as its only true 
glory than the Life of Sir William Jones, by Lord Teignmouth. It 
exhibits the wonders which unremitted study, upheld by the pure and 
noble ambition of doing good, can accomplish in the space of a short life. 
He was a man of the most varied knowledge. An extensive and, indeed, 
extraordinary acquaintance with ancient and modern languages was, 
perhaps, his chief accomplishment. Although he engaged very late in 
life in the study of the law, such was his industry and success that he 
soon occupied the highest judicial station in British India; and the 
profession is indebted to his pen for one of the most beautiful of the 
elementary treatises wliich adorn the lawyer’s library. ‘In his early 
days,’ says his biographer, ‘he seems to have entered upon his career of 
study with the maxim strongly impressed upon his mind, that whatever 
had been attained, was attainable by him; and it has been remarked 
that he never neglected nor overlooked any opportunity of improving 
his intellectual faculties, or of acquiring esteemed accomplishments.’ 
Notwithstanding his numerous occupations at the Bar at home, the 
onerous duties of his station in India, and his premature death, before 
he had attained his forty-eight year, he has left behind many learned 
works, which illustrate Oriental languages, and history, and attest the 
extent of his labors and acquisitions. Indeed, it might be regarded as 
impossible, were we not informed of the regular allotment which he made 
of his time, to particular occupations, and his scrupulous adherence to 
the distribution he thus made. The moral character of this eminent man 
was no less exemplary. He had more virtues and less faults than I ever 
yet knew in any human being; and the goodness of his head, admirable 
as it was, was exceeded by that of his heart.” 

— Sharswood's ^Legal Ethics,' 17^-5. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


395 


HTS VERSATILITY 

Pew men have died more regretted, or whose loss to the world of 
letters was more deeply felt than Sir William Jones, who as a linguist 
has scarcely ever been surpassed. His acquaintance with the history, 
philosophy, laws, religion, science, and manners of nations, was most 
extensive and profound. It was by a persevering observance to 
a few principal maxims that he was principally enabled to accompUsh 
what he did. One of these was, never to neglect an opportunity of im¬ 
provement; another was, that whatever had been attained by others, 
was attainable by him, and that, therefore, the real or supposed dif¬ 
ficulties of any pursuit formed no reason why he should not engage in 
it, and with perfect confidence of success. 

“It was also,” says Lord Teignmouth, “a fixed principle with him, 
from which he never voluntarily deviated, not to be deterred by any 
difficulties which were surmountable, from prosecuting to a successful 
termination what he had once deliberately undertaken. But what 
appears to me,” adds his lordship, “more particulary to have enabled 
him to employ his talents so much to his own and the public advantage 
was the regular allotment of his time to particular occupations, and 
scrupulous adherence to the distribution wMch he had fixed; hence all 
his studies were pursued without interruption or confusion.” 

He mastered the Greek and Latin languages. Oriental tongues, Arabic, 
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German, and Persian. Wrote 
a life of Zoroaster, a pamphlet on ‘Legal Mode of Suppressing Riots,’ 
‘Essay on the Law of Bailments,’ ‘A Dialogue between a Parmer and a 
Country Gentleman on the Principles of Government;’ for the pub¬ 
lication of which the Dean of St. Asaph, afterwards his brother-in-law, 
had a bill of indictment preferred against him for sedition. He became 
judge in the Supreme Court of Judicature, Bengal, to which he was 
nominated in March, 1783, and knighted. He died in 1794, in his 48th 
year.— Author. 

A MASTER OF LANGUAGES,—JAS. FREEMAN CLARKE 

“Sir William Jones was one of those who was well equipped, a born 
philologist, loving words for their own sake—‘one who,’ says Lord Bacon, 
‘have come forth from the second general course, which was the con¬ 
fusion of tongues, by the art of grammar.’ Perhaps Sir William Jones 
was the greatest among these. A paper in his own hand-writing tells us 
that he Imew critically eight languages—Enghsh, Latin, French, Italian, 
Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit; less perfectly eight others— 
Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; 
and was moderately familiar with twelve more—Tibetian, Pali, Phalavi, 
Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and 
Chinese. 

There have been, perhaps, other scholars who have known as many 
languages as this. But usually they are crushed by their own accumu¬ 
lations, and we never hear of their accompfishing anything. Jones was 
not one of these ‘deeply versed in books, and shallow in himself.’ Lan¬ 
guage was his instrument, but knowledge his aim. * * * As a lawyer, a 
judge, a student of natural history, his ardor of study was equally 
apparent.” 

—From 'Ten Great Religions' title 'Brahmism', Vol. 1, 78-9. 


FRANK B. KELLOGG (1856- ), Minnesota 

U. S. OWES COLUMBIA NOTHING 

“Now let me state the issue at the outset. In 1903, after being author¬ 
ized by Congress to do so, President Roosevelt negotiated a treaty with 
Columbia for the acquisition of French rights and the construction of 
the Panama Canal. The U. S. was to pay 10 million dollars and an 
annuity of one-fourth million dollars per annum. It was ratified by the 
Senate, but in Oct., 1903, the Columbian congress refused to ratify it, 
for reasons which I shall discuss. Thereupon, Panama revolted and 
set up a separate government, which w'e recognized according to the 
principles of international law, and which also was recognized by all 
tbe leading nations of the v'-orld, including substantially all the South 
American countries. 

“We made a treaty with Panama for construction of the canal and paid 
her the same compensation we had previously agreed to pay Columbia. 
This action was ratified by tbe senate. The canal has been built and 
for seventeen years we have consistently, as a nation, miade the claim that 
our action was entirely legal in this respect. Now, what is the position 
of Columbia ? 

“She claimed in 1903, and ever since has claimed, that the U. S. violated 
its treaty of 1846 with New Grenada to which she succeeded; that we 
failed to maintain the sovereignty of Columbia over Panama; that we 
violated the principles of neutrality by intervening with an armed force, 
and prevented Columbia from putting down the rebellion; and that we 
are responsible and should make reparation to Columbia for all the 
moral, physical and financial losses which she sustained by reason of 
her separation from Panama. 

“This position she has reiterated from time to time. * * * No man since 
Lincoln has exercised a greater influence than Roosevelt. He came nearer 
to knowing and sharing, in his daily life, the aspirations and motives 
which move the great mass of the })eople and work out the destiny of 
nations, than any man of his time. In his intercourse wuth other nations 
he was broad-minded, just, and ever jealous of the good name and the 
fame of bis country, and when the impartial historian shall write the his¬ 
tory of the Panama canal, I am confident of the verdict, and I shall not 
vote for any treaty which will place a lasting blot upon that name. 

“Mr. President, the events of 1903, which led to the separation of 
Panama from Columbia, the making of the Panama treaty, and the 
construction of the canal have passed into history. That history is 
written in the records of tbe State Department in the correspondence 
between Columbia, Panama and the U. S., in the messages of the Presi¬ 
dent and in the laws of confess. From an examination of the documents 
and this record I am convinced beyond question that this government 
did not violate its treaty with Columbia, did not instigate the revolution; 
had a perfect right to recognize Panama and enter the treaty for the 
canal concession and to acquire the French canal and complete the 
work, and that the title of the U. S. is good in law and morals. That 
title has been recognized by the civilized wwld, accepted by the congress 
and the American people, and now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, 
Ave are asked to make reparation to Columbia for taking Panama.” 

—In U. S. Senate, Apr. IS, 1921. 


JAMES KENT (1763-1847), New York . - 

ROMAN COMMERCE 

“The genius of the Roman government was military and not com¬ 
mercial. , Mercantile professions were despised: nothing was esteemed 
honorable but the plow and the sword. They prohibited commerce to 
persons of birth, rank and fortune. Their navigation was for the purpose 
of war,and not of commerce.”— James Kent. 

GRECIAN COMMERCE 

“The universality and stability of the Greek tongue were owing largely 
to the conquests of Alexander, to the tenacity of the Greeks,, and the 
inimitable excellence of the language itself; but it is mainlj^ due to their 
commercial genius,, and the colonies and factories which they estab¬ 
lished, and the trade and correspondence which they maintained through¬ 
out the then known parts of the Eastern world.” —James Kent. 

VALUE OF A LIBRARY 

“I began early to form a select and chosen library, and that object 
I have ever since kept steadily in view, and I have alv^ays found my 
library to constitute a great and essential source of, felicity. It has be^n 
my mentor, my guardian genius^ and has cherished in me a passion for 
letters which has literally grown vdth my growth and strengthened with 
my .strength.” — Chancellor Janies Kent. 

THE OLD REPORTS 

“I have now finished a succinct detail of the principal reporters; and 
when the student has been thoroughly initiated in the elements of legal 
science, I would recommend them to his notice. The old cases, prior 
to the year 1688, need only to be occasionally consulted, and the leading 
decisions in them examined. Some of them, however, are to be deeply 
explored and studied, and particularly those cases and decisions which 
have spread their influence far and. vdde, and established principles 
which lie at the foundations of English jinisprudence. Such eases have 
stood the scrutiny of contemporary judges, and been illustrated by 
succeeding artists, and are destined to guard and control the most distant 
posterity. The reports of eases since the middle of the last century 
ought, in most instances, to be read in course, and they will conduct the 
student over an immense field of forensic discussion. They contain that 
great body of the commercial law, and of the law of contracts, and of 
trusts, which govern at this day. They are worthy of being studied 
even by scholars of taste and general literature, as being, authentic 
memorials of the business and manners of the age in which they i^re 
composed. Law reports are dramatic in their plan of structure. They 
abound in pathetic incident, and displays of deep feeling. They are 
faithful records of those ‘little competitions, factions, and debates of 
mankind’ that fill up the principal drama of human life; and which 
are engendered by the love of power, the appetite for Wealth, the allure¬ 
ments of pleasure, the delusions of self-interest, the melancholy per¬ 
version of talent, and the machinations of fraud. They give us the skill¬ 
ful debates at the bar, and the elaborate opinions on the bench, delivered 
with the authority of oracular wisdom. They become deeply interesting 
because they contain true portraits of the talents and learning of the 


398 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


sages of the law. We should have known but very little of the great and 
varied accomplishments of Lord Mansfield, if we had not been possessed 
of the faithful reports of his decisions. It is there that his title to the 
character of ‘founder of the commercial law of England’ is verified. 
A like value may be attributed to the reports of the decisions of Holt, 
Hardwicke, Willes, Wilmot, DeGray, Camden, Thurlow, Buller, Kenyon, 
Sir William Scott, Grant and many illustrious names, which will 
be immortal as the Enghsh law. Nor is it to be overlooked as a 
matter of minor importance, that the judicial tribunals have been 
almost uniformly distinguished for their immaculate purity. Every 
person well acquainted with the contents of the English reports must 
have been struck with the unbending integrity and lofty morals with 
which the courts were inspired. I do not know where we could resort, 
among all the volumes of human composition, to find more constant 
more tranquil, and more sublime manifestations of the intrepidity of 
conscious rectitude. If we were to go back to the iron times of the 
Tudors, and follow judicial history down from the first page of Dyer 
to the last reporter, we should find the higher courts of civil judicature, 
generally, and with rare exceptions, presenting the image of the sanctity 
of a temple, where truth and justice seem to be enthroned, and to be 
personified in their decrees.”— James Kent—1 Commentaries, If86-J^97. 

This paragraph shows the Chancellor at his best, and is a fair sample 
of his grave and measured eloquence, his deep erudition, and Mndly 
sympathy and human interest. He reaches his judicial conclusions after 
painstaking examination and study of the authorities.— Author. 

C CERO 

“Cicero was the greatest philosopher, scholar, and orator, take him 
all in all, of the ancient world.”— Written by Kent, when 31 years old. 

/ REFUSED TO SIGN PLEDGE 

! “Gentlemen, I refuse to sign any pledge. I never have been drunk, 
but I have a constitutional privilege to get drunk, and that privilege 
^I will not sign away.”— Kent's reply to a Temperancot Committee. 

PINKNEY 

“Pinkney’s talents were splendid, but his moral character was bad; 
he Was wrapped up in himself and deemed himself great, without an equal. 
He cared for nothing but what contributed to his individual vanity and 
gratification. He modeled himself upon Cicero, and had his poHshed 
style, his art, his ambition as an actor, and his vanity. He was a perfect 
dandy in his dress, and devoted much, to his dear person. He was brave 
and not vindictive, and upon the whole would make a sacrifice to gratify 
his love of self and of fame. He was destitute of the noblest qualifications, 
simplicity, modesty, generosity, purity, disinterestedness, and, in short, 
he was one of the ‘brightest and meanest of mankind.” 

, —Judge Kent to H. Wheaton, 1826. 

TR BUTE TO BLACKSTONE 

“I owe my reputation to the fact that, when studying law during the 
War, I had but one book, ‘Blackstone’s Commentaries,’ but that one book 
I mastered.”— Said by Kent. 

HAMILTON AS A LAWYER 

“Mr Hamilton had an overwhelming share of the mercantile and 
insurance law of New York City, and though that bar could boast of 



GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


399 


the clear intellect, the candor, the simplicity, the black-letter learning 
of the elder Jones, the profound and richly-varied learning of Harrison, 
the classical taste and elegant accomplishments of Brockholst Livingston, 
the solid and accurate, but unpretending common-law learning of Troup, 
the chivalrous feelings and dignified address of Pendleton, yet the mighty 
mind of Hamilton would at times bear down all opposition by its com¬ 
prehensive grasp and strength of his reasoning powers. He taught us 
all how to probe deeply into the hidden recesses of the science, or to 
follow up principles to their far distant sources. He was not content 
with the modern reports, abridgements, or translations. He ransacked 
cases and precedents to their foundations, and we lea ned from him to 
carry our inquiries into the commercial codes of the European continent, 
and in a special manner to illustrate the law of insurance by the severe 
judgment of Emerigen, and the luminous commentaries of Valin. * * * 
I have little doubt that i" General Hamilton had lived twenty years 
longer he would have rivalled Socrates, or Bacon, or any of the sages 
of ancient or modern times in researches after truth and in benevolence 
to mankind.”— F om Kents' memories of Hamilton to his widow, in 1832. 

CHARGED WITH HYPOCRICY BY WIFE 

On one occasion Judge Kent and his wife, Betsy, were walking. They 
met a man whom he disliked. After the Judge had greeted this man 
and said: “I am happy to meet you,” and passed on, Mrs. Kent bantered 
him for “hypocricy.” “I was glad to meet him,” said he, “but I should 
have been very sorry if he had been going our way.” 

At another time, a friend knowing his dislike for the New York politics 
of the Evening Post, expressed surprise to find him reading it. “Why not ?” 
said he. “I want to know what the devil is doing in this world as well as 
the other people.” 

TOASTS IN BOSTON TO KENT 

In 1823, at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner, the toasts were on the chairman’s 
instantaneous requisition. Judge Parker gave: “The happy climate 
of New York, where the moral sensibilities and the intellectual energies 
are preserved long after constitutional decay has taken place.” Judge 
Story gave: “The State of New York, where the law of the land has 
been so ably administered that it has become the land of the law.” 
Chancellor Kent instantly replied: “The State of Massachusetts, the 
land of Story as well as of song.” 

“I have never known any other man whose reading and study were 
so universal as his. * * * He knew all about everything he had ever studied, 
and he had studied almost everything.” 

—Said Benj. D. Silliman, in 1889, who" read law with Judge Kent. 

RIGHTS OF PERSON 

“The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of 
personal security, the right of personal liberty and the right to acquire 
and enjoy property.” 

JAS. KENT’S DEFINITION OF GOVERNMENT 

“Government must be framed for man as he is, and not for man as 
he should be if he were free from vice.”— 1 Kent's Commentaries, 305. 

JUDGE DUER’S COMMENT 

“The case of Griswold v. Waddington (15” and 16” Johnson’s Reports) 
contains more elaborate and thorough investigation into the consequences 


400 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


of a war, as affecting the relations, intercourse and contracts of the 
respective subjects of the hostile states, than is to be found in any other 
adjudicated case, or in any treatise pn the subject, in our own, or in any 
foreign language. It is not merely a judicial opinion, but a most learned 
and exhaustive dissertation on tliis branch of national and municipal 
law, embracing a masterly and critical analysis of all the eases, and 
supp>brting every position by an irresistible force of argument and 
weight of authority. Like the famous treatise by Bynkershoeck on 
Public Law it ought not to be transiently consulted; but by a diligent 
and repeated perusal, should be transfused into the mind of the student.” 

— Dver^s Discourses on Kent, pp. 50-1. 

Kent: James Kent administered equity so extensive and entire 
that with a single Exception (that of Lord Nottingham) it has no parallel 
in legal history.” 


FREDERIC R. COUDERT ON SUCCESS AT THE BAR 

“There is no royal road to success at the bar, nor are there, that I 
know of, rules of conduct that will furnish the aspirant to forensic honors 
with a passport to fortune. Success in the profession, as in every other 
pursuit, is the logical result of given premises that are common to all, 
the only difference being that our standard is higher than any other. 
If, however, I were called upon to illustrate a possible difference, I would 
say that the law differs from dry goods, stock jobbing or distilling whisky 
mainly in this, that the primary object of these is to make money. A 
profit is the direct, exclusive and objective point of the operator. 

“In law, and, I may add, in medicine, art comes first. T'le lawyer 
who does not care more for the triumph of his cause than for his fee will 
not and should not succeed. The fee follows the triumph as the accessory 
the principal. The great mistake of the beginner is to look first at the 
accessory. The lawyer should love his business. If the law is a Science, 
it is also an art. Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, and Ogden Hoffman 
were as thoroug^i artists in their v/ay i.s Paganini or Thalberg or Patti. 
NGr does this view exclude thorough sincerity; on the contrary, the artist 
plays upon his instrument, whether a violin or a jury, all the i3ctter when 
his hea,rt is in the work. 

“The lawyer who starts with the idea that honesty is the best policy, 
jj,nd who is therefore honest, is unworthy to take high rank in his profes¬ 
sion. Honesty may or may not be tl e best policy, but he vdll certainly 
find instances where he thinks it is not. I entertain real compassion for 
the youth who practices law on tl at tl eory. He was intended for some¬ 
thing else. He should try the business of'—I shall not make invidious 
distinction by specifying. I shall end A^'. ith a precept Avorth its AATiight in 
gold. . Do ncV allow yourself to be handicapped at the start. Competition 
Avill not permit the extra Aveight. You are handicapped if you think 
you are a genius not bound to drudgery; or if you have a habit that you 
cannot control, overcome, stamp out and laugh at. If you need a cigar 
after your lunch or a cocktail before your dinner; if you cannot retire 
at a respectable hour in the eA^ening; if you cannot reach your office 
betimes in the morning or you loA^e some other business better than your 
oAAm, and find irresistible music in the ticker of the Stock Exchange, 
close your office and consult a phrenologist—you vdll never take a front 
rank. That shock-headed, rough-looking little fellow Avho sweeps out 
your office and plods at a Blackstone at night carries lighter weight than 
you do, and AA'ill go by the winning post AA'hile you are tightening your 
saddle girths .”—Letter to N. Y. Herald, March 8,'l891. 




LORD LLOYD KENYON (1732-1802), England 

THE BUTLER DENOUNCED FOR STEALING WINE 

“Prisoner at tlie bar, you stand convicted, on the most conclusive 
evidence, of a crime of inexpressible atrocity —a crime that defiles the 
sacred springs of domestic confidence, and is calculated to strike alarm 
into the breast of every Englishman who invests largely ift the choicer 
vintages of Southern Europe. Like the serpent of old, you have stung 
the hand of your protector. Fortunate in having a generous employer, 
you might, without dishonesty, have continued to supply your vTetched 
wife and children with the comforts of sufficient prosperity and even with 
some . of . the luxuries of affluence; but dead to every claim of natural 
affection, and blind to your own real interest, you burst through all the 
restraints of religion and morality, and have for many years beeii feather¬ 
ing your nest with your master’s bottles.” 

—Lord Lloyd Kenyon, Eng.‘ {1732-1802.) 

Born in Wales, died in Bath, England. He was Chief Justice of Eng¬ 
land, 1788-1802; was deeply learned in law, and profoundly ignorant 
of everything else; his intimate companions were Dunning, Erskine, 
and Horne Tooke; left a fortune of 200,000 pounds, or a million dollars; 
was domineering as a judge; was parsimonious, so much so that after 
his death, a hatchment was put on his house, with the motto painted by 
mistake. Mors Janua vita. Eldon insisted that Kenyon so ordered it 
to save the extra expense of the fin al dip thong. 

NOT A POPULAR ADVOCATE 

Kenyon was never a popular or successful advocate, but he made $15,- 
000 a year by answering cases. 

MUST BE POOR TO STUDY LAW 

Kenyon said to a rich friend, whose son was to study law: /*8r, let 
yoiu son forthwith spend Ins fortune, marry and spend liis wife’s, aud 
then he may be expected to apply with energy to his profession.” 

— Morrison s Life of Jeremiah Smith, 378. 

PRACTICAL WAY TO LEARN LAW 

When Lord Kenyon was Chief Justice of England there used to be 
a box for the law students close to the bench, and the Judge would show 
them the pleadings and explain their effect. 

— Lord Campbell’s Life of the Chief Justices. 


THOMAS .JEFFERSON ON ENTANGLING ALLIANCES WITH 

EUROPE 

“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take 
active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely 
different from our own. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, 
their complicated alliances, their forms and i>rinciples of government 
are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. America has a 
hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which 
must not be subordinate to those of Europe.” — iT/mma.? Jefferson. 



RUFUS KING (1755-1827), New York 

AS A LEGISLATOR AND DEBATER 

“All who have had an opportunity of witnessing any important dis¬ 
cussion in the Senate, in which Mr. King has taken part, have almost 
universally assigned him the palm. His talents are spoken of in more 
exalted terihs, even by his political opponents, than any other member 
of that body, and we do not think it would be too much to say, that he is 
superior at this time (1813), to any other man of which the United States 
can boast. Bred up in the service of his country, and guided by the 
strictest integrity, he has justly acquired a reputation which entitles him 
to the confidence of his fellow-citizens. With such a man at the head of 
our government, we might soon expect to witness a change in the gloomy 
aspect of the affairs, and that scene of prosperity again restored which 
formerly spread its blessings around us. For many years he has lived 
in the retirement of private life, and his talents when greatly required, 
have been lost to his country. But since all parties now unite in speaking 
his praise, it is sincerely to be wished that his councils may produce that 
effect which they so eminently deserve. If ever there is a time when 
honest men come ag:ain into fashion, it will be the pride of our nation 
to have a statesman like him to direct its affairs. But as long as the people 
are controlled by those wild opinions which seem now to actuate them, 
they never will be able to distinguish between their real and pretended 
friends. 

“The only hopes that can be entertained at present are that those 
sufferings, which they have already experienced and those which yet 
await them, will learn then to discriminate between those who look 
at their best interests, and those who pursue the idle phantoms of a 
distempered imagination.” 

—From the Md. Gazette, July 16, 1913, Vol. 5, King's Life and 
Correspondence, 321. 

HAMILTON’S TESTIMONY AS TO KING 

“Mr. King is a remarkably well informed man, a very judicious one, 
a man of address, a man of fortune and economy, whose situation affords 
just ground for confidence; a man of unimpeached probity, where he is 
best known, a firm friend of the government, a supporter of the measures 
of the President; a man who cannot but feel that he has strong pre¬ 
tensions to confidence and trust.”— Hamilton in letter to Washington, 1796. 

KING AS AN ORATOR 

“To Mr. King it was assigned to answer Aaron Burr, if he should take 
part in the debate. Otherwise he was not to speak. Mr. Burr did not 
rise to address the chair until the President bad proceeded half way 
in putting the question; and then commenced and went tlirough a dis¬ 
course of considerable ingenuity. When he had finished, Mr. King 
immediately replied; and it is said to have displayed his talents as an 
orator more powerfully than on any other occasion during his whole life. 
An able judge of eloquence, and one of the first men of our country, 
represents the exhibition as transcending anything that modern, if not 
ancient times, ever produced. He says the orator worked himself up into 
such a fervor, that he leapt from the fioor, and that, extravagant as 
this action may now appear, it was no more then than the ‘action suited 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


403 


to the word.’ * * * Of late years it has been observed that Mr. King has 
with the animation of his manner given place to a more calm and dig¬ 
nified moderation.” 

—From Delaplaines Repository — V ol 1, 18^; also 1 King's Life 
and Cor., 532. 

KING ON GREAT BRITAIN CONTROLLING THE MERCHANT 
MARINE OF THE WORLD 

“We have moreover passed a navigation law that, after September, 
closes our ports against British vessels coming from British ports closed 
against American vessels. This is a strong measure, but called for, 
as I believe by a just regard for American navigation. We are independent 
of Great Britain for supplies of sugar, coffee, rum, etc. Whether she be 
alike independent of us for livestock, provisions, bread-stuffs, timber, 
lumber, staves, and heading is to be now ascertained. Perhaps the 
ports of Bermuda and the Bahamas, which are open to us, may still enable 
the English ships to carry on a disproportionate share of this intercourse; 
if so, we must go further when we see the operation of the new law. It 
must be made effectual so far as to secure to us an equal share at least of 
the navigation. If England still continues to say that we have nothing 
to give her for admitting out money and ships in her East Indies, we 
may say in return: be it so if you think so; but if you will not allow us 
to go and buy your East India fabrics, we will not allow them to be 
brought by you to our country, nor indeed will we allow them to be 
used or consumed by our people; in a word, the letter and spirit of the 
law (which passed with great unanimity, and which never at any former 
time would have passed at all), closed our ports against British vessels 
from any British port or place closed against American vessels. 

“I gave all my heart and all my strength, with all my hopes of success 
to this measure, which in principle is incomparably the most important 
law ever passed on this, and perhaps on any other subject. England, 
at this day, by the extension of her commercial stations throughout 
the world, and the application of her navigation law to this extension 
of dominion, has effectively monopolized a great portion of the navi¬ 
gation necessary to carry on the commerce of the world. As respects 
others she is now more disproportionately in possession of the general 
commerce of nations than the Dutch were in the middle of the seven¬ 
teenth century; and our laws must check her, as her navigation laws 
have checked and broken down the Dutch. Don’t understand that I 
expect or desire any breaking down of England; but I do hope that, if 
faithful to ourselves, we shall oblige England to let us in for a fair share 
of the general trade carried on between the nations of the earth.” 

—From letter to Jeremiah Mason, Apr. 21, 1818. ‘Clark's Repro¬ 
duction of the Memoir, etc., of Jeremiah Mason,' 197-8. 

JEREMIAH MASON’S OPINION OF KING 

Rufus King, whom Mason thought the most able man and the greatest 
orator he had ever known, Webster relates, that while in Mr. Christopher 
Gore’s office in Boston, a gentleman came in and asked to see Mr. Gore, 
who was not in. He sat down to wait for him. He was dressed in plain 
gray clothes. Webster was reading a work on the Law of Nations, which 
had much to say of ships and freight, etc. The stranger coming up to 
the table said: “Well, I read that book, too, when I was a boy.”(Mr.King, 
for this was the stranger’s name, was then 50), and says Webster, pro¬ 
ceeded to talk not only about ships and freights, but insurance, prize, 
and other matters of maritime law, in a manner, to put me up to all I 
knew, and a good deal more. „ 

—See Webster's Autobiography, 19; and Clark s Reproduction of 
the Memoir, etc., of Jeremiah Mason,' note b, 57. 


404 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


FEDERAL AND STATE POWER 

“Rome in former times was the seat of a great central power, wliich 
reached to her remotest provinces, and the life, liberty and property 
of the citizens'were everywhere held at the mercy of this power. Paris, 
in our own time, has also been the seat of a great centra-l power, which 
extended over all parts of France, and, acting upon the people in all their 
towns and villages, punished opposition to its mandates, and whatsoever 
were deemed errors in political opinion, with confiscation of property, 
and loss of life. 

“These remarks are not to be answered by a reference to the practice 
of the State Legislatures. Conferences and meetings among the members 
of those local bodies, to agree upon measures in reference to state policy, 
are not liable to the same objections. Their influence is less powerful, 
and they operate within more limited spheres, and the members are more 
responsible for their political acts, as well by the greater frequency of 
state elections, as by the scene of their political operations being nearer 
to the supervision and inspection of their constituents. Neither are there 
the same constitutional objections arising from the inequalities of the 
states and from our federative and balanced system of government. 

“It was to protect the states from this great central power that, in¬ 
stead of concentrating power in one place, the Constitution has provided 
for the division and distribution of it throughout and among the states. 
By adhering to this division and distribution of power, tho we find our 
government less simple, more expensive and less magnificent, we may 
rationally hope to preserve our political integrity, and to perpetuate 
our liberties. 

“There are apparent defects in our Constitutiou. We 1 ave neverthe¬ 
less, ir;creased and prospered under it. If these defects were cured, the 
very means which should effect the cure may introduce, as has happened, 
other and greater defects, especially when these alterations are made in 
the midst of political excitement, and without opportunity of regarding 
all the evils connected with the remedial amendments. 

“All that is the work of man, is like him, imperfect. We probably 
enjoy a greater portion of freedom and happiness than falls to the lot of 
other nations; and, because we desire yet more, we must be careful 
not to lose what w^e have, by hasty and partial alterations in our plan 
of government. I would, therefore, prefer to adhere for the present to 
the Constitution as it is, in hopes that adequate means may be devised 
to suppress this great and alarming central power, which is now oppressing 
the Constitution itself, by controlling and superseding its wise and well- 
considered provisions.”— In U. 8. Senate, March 18, 1821/. 

Mr. King was an American political leader, member of the Constitu¬ 
tional Convention of 1787, defender of the Jay Treaty of 1794, opponent 
of slavery, Vice-Presidential candidate of the Federalists in 1804 and 
1808, and candidate i r President in 1816. He read law with Theophilus 
Parsons, and became prominent as a lawyer and political leader. 


J. PROCTER KNOTT (1830-1911), Kentucky 


DULUTH 

“I was utterly at a loss to determine where the terminus of this great 
and indispensable road should be, until I accidentally overheard some 
gentleman the other day mention the name of 'Duluth.' 

''Djiluth! the word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable 
charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the 
midst of roses; or tho* soft, sweet accents of an angel’s whisper in the 
bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. 

"Dvluthl ’Twas the name for which my soul had panted, for years, as 
the hart panteth for the water-brooks. But where was Duhdh? Never 
in all my limited reading had my vision been gladdened by seeing the 
celestial word in print, and I felt a profound humiliation in my ignorance 
that its dulcet syllables had never before ravished my delighted ear. 
I was certain the draughtsman in his bill had never hoard of it or it would 
have been designated as one the termini of bins road. I asked my friends 
about it, but they know nothing of it. I rushed to the library and ex¬ 
amined all the maps I could find, I discovered in one of them a delicate 
hair-line, diverging from the Mississippi near a place marked Prescott, 
which, I tupposed, was intended to represent the river St. Croix, but 
could nowhere find Duluth. .Nevertheless, I was confident it existed 
somewhei'e, and that its discovery would constitute the crowning glory 
of the present century, if not of all modern times. I knew it was bound 
to exist in the very nature of things; that the elements of maternal 
nature would since have resolved themselves back into original chaos 
if there had been such a hiatus in creation as would have resulted from 
leaving out Duluth! In fact, sir, I was overwhelmed with the conviction 
that Duluth not only existed somewhere, but that wherever it was, it 
was a great and glorious place. I was convinced that the greatest calamity 
that ever befell the benighted nations of the ancient world was in their 
having passed away without a knowledge of the actual existence of 
Duluth] that their fabled Atlantis, never seen save by the hallowed vision 
of the inspired poesy, was, in fact, but another name for Duluth] that the 
golden orchard of the Hesperides was but a poetical synonym for the 
beer-gardens in the vicinity of Duluth. I was certain that Heroditus had 
died a miserable death, because in all his travels and with all his geo¬ 
graphical research he had never heard of Duluth. I knew that if the 
immortal spirit of Homer could look down from another Heaven than 
that created by his own celestial genius upon the long lines of pilgrims 
from every nation of the earth to the gushing fountain of poesy opened 
by the touch of his magic wand, if he could be permitted to behold the 
vast assemblage of grand and glorious productions of the l\Tic art called 
into being by his own inspired strains, he would weep tears of bitter anguish 
that, instead of lavishing all the stores of his mighty genius upon the 
fall of Illion, it had not been his more blessed lot to crystalize in death¬ 
less song the rising glories of Duluth. Yes, sir, had it not been for this 
map, kindly furnished me by the legislature of Minnesota, I might have 
gone down to my obscure grave in an agony of despair, because I could 
nowhere find Duluth. Had such been my melancholy fate, I have no 
doubt that with the last feeble pulsation of my breaking heart, with the 
last faint exhalation of my fleeting breath, I should have whispered, 
‘Where is Duluth'V' 

— J. Proctor Knott—Extract from his speech hi the II. of R., Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., on The St. Croix and Superior Land Grant, Jan. ^1, 

1871. 


406 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


He was born near Lebanon, Ky., 1830; practiced law in his native 
State and Missouri; was Attorney-General and Governor of Ky.; Demo¬ 
cratic Member of Congress, ’67-’71; member of the Constitutional Con¬ 
vention of Ky.; Dean of the Law Faculty (’94-’01), of Centre College, at 
Danville, Ky. 


ROGER WILLIAMS—‘RELIGIOUS LIBERTY’ 

“Roger Williams was a hero in the highest sense of that much-abused 
word. Of all the men that ever mingled in the good fight for freedom of 
opinion, he carried the most glittering weapon, fought the hardest battle, 
and won the most brilliant triumph. Single-handed and alone he strove 
against a tumultuous throng of enemies who pressed upon him in front, 
in fiank and rear. And never yet was a hero so magnanimous in victory, 
or in adversity so calmly steadfast to his cause. His character is invested 
with that peculiar interest which we all feel in a great injured man, 
whose merits are the glory, while the wrongs he suffered are the shame 
of the times he lived in. His intellectual vision saw the truth at a glance, 
and his honest heart accepting it without hesitation, pushed it at once to 
its ultimate consequences. His eloquence was remarkable for its clear¬ 
ness and fervor; he had a steadiness of purpose which opposition only 
made firmer, and no danger that ever thickened around him could 
tame the audacity of his courage. Thus gifted he came to Massachusetts 
in the vigor of his early manhood, and immediately took up the defense 
of what he called ‘sanctity of conscience.’ It would have been a safer 
employment to denounce Mohammedanism in any part of Turkey. 
Mary Fisher made a fair trial of both. She went to Boston and she went 
to Constantinople. She publicly administered to the Sultan and to the 
elders of the Puritan church the rebuke which in her opinion was needed 
by each; and her report of the comparative treatment she received gives 
a decided preference to the Turks. The intrepid spirit of Williams, 
however, was not to be quelled; his denunciation of tyranny became 
unsparing in proportion as the threats against himself grew louder. 
Such a man could not fail to have friends among the people; but those 
who wielded the political power of the ecclesiastical influence of the colony 
were against him in a compact body, and hated him with that bitter 
intensity of hatred which religious bigotry alone can inspire.” 

—Jeremiah S. Black, on Religious Liberty,^ at Pennsylvania College, 

Sept. 17, 1866. 


A VIVID CONTRAST 

When Philander C. Knox, late Attorney-General of the United States, 
went to Washington, he received a bit of good-natured chaff from Ids 
colleagues in the Cabinet by reason of his diminished stature. One day 
he was telling Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, of a sight-seeing trip. 

“Do you know,” said he, “that until this present trip to the Capital, 
I never had visited the Washington Monument. Well I slipped down to 
say I had a look at it. I had my photo taken while standing at the base 
of the shaft.” “How did the monument stand the contrast?” queried 
Shaw. 

“Really, it didn’t present so insignificant an appearance as you might 
imagine,” responded the Attorney-General. — The Author. 




L Q. C. LAMAR (1825-1893), Mississippi 


PUBLIC SPEAKING 

“Never attempt to speak when you are not prepared. I try not to 
speak, unless I am prepared. I don’t write my speeches; my practice 
is, after preparing a speech, after having determined what subjects to 
discuss, to frame my sentence in my mind; to turn each sentence over and 
over until I get it in shape to suit me, and then to repeat it to myself 
until it is thoroughly impressed on my mind, and then to go on to the 
next sentence; so that when I am through with my preparation, I not 
only know what I am going to say, but the very gesture that will ac¬ 
company every word of it. You will find it difficult at first to do that, 
but you can soon train yourself to it.” 

Lamar had the most famous tilt with Blaine in the Unietd States 
Senate known to that body. 

“If the Senator from N. Y. accuses me of bad faith, I say to the Senator 
from N. Y. he is guilty of a falsehood, and I repel it with all the contempt 
I feel for the author.”— Lamar. 

“Should the Senator from Miss., in the presence of the Senate, charge 
me by intimation with telling a falsehood, I would denounce him as a 
black-guard, a coward, and a liar.”— Blaine. 

“I have only to say to the Senator from N. Y., he understood me 
correctly. I said precisely the words he understood me. I beg pardon 
of the Senate for it; my language was such as no good man would deserve, 
and no brave man would wear.”— Lamar. 

SLAVERY DEAD 

“Sir, the Southern people believe that conquest has shifted the Union 
from the basis of compact to that of force. They fully recognize the 
fact that every claim to the right of secession from the Union is extin¬ 
guished and eliminated from the American system and no longer consti¬ 
tutes a part of the apparatus of the American government. They believe 
that the institution of slavery, with all its incidents and affinities, is 
dead, extinguished, sunk into a sea that ^ves not up its dead. They 
cherish no aspirations nor schemes for its resuscitation. With their 
opinions on the rightfulness of slavery unchanged by the events of the 
war, yet as an enlightened people accepting what is inevitable, they 
would not, if they could, again identify their destiny as a people with 
an institution that stands antagonized so utterly by all the sentiments 
and living forces of modern civilization.” 

REPLY TO GEO. F. HOAR 

“Now, sir, I do not wish to make any remarks here (U. S. Senate) 
that will engender any excitement or ffiscussion, but I say that the 
Senator from Massachusetts connected that name (Jefferson Davis) 
with treason. We all know that the results of this war have attached 
to the people of the South the technical crime of rebellion, and we submit 
to it: but that was not the sense in which the gentleman used that term 
as applied to Mr. Davis. He intended to affix—I will not say he intended 
—but the inevitable effect of it was, to affix upon this aged man, this 
man broken in fortune, suffering from bereavement—an epithet of odium 
and imputation of moral turpitude. Sir, it required no courage to do 
that; it required no magnanimity to do it; it required no courtesy. It 
only required hate, bitter, malignant, sectional feeling and a sense of 


408 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


personal impunity. The gentleman, I believe, takes rank among Chris¬ 
tian statesmen. When Prometheus was bound to the rock it was not 
an eagle—it was a vultm*e—that buried its beak in the tortured vitals 
of the victim.”— J. Q. C. Lamar, on a Mexican Pension Bill. 

ENCOUNTER WITH CONKLING 

Lamar: “With reference to the charge of bad faith that the Senator 
from N. Y. has intimated toward those of us who have been engaged in 
opposing these motions (the Armj^ Bill) to adjourn, I have only to say 
that if I am not superior to such attacks from such a source, I have 
lived in vain. It is not my habit to indulge in personalities, but I desire 
to say here to the Senate that in intimating anything inconsistent, as 
he has done, with perfect good faith, I pronounce his statement a false¬ 
hood, which I repel with all the unmitigated contempt that I feel for 
the author of it.” 

Conkling: “Mr. President, I was diverted during the commence¬ 
ment of the remark, the culmination of which I heard from the member 
from Mississippi. If I understand him right, he intended to impute and 
did in plain and unparliamentary language impute, to me an intentional 
misstatement. The Senate does not disclaim that I understand the 
Senator from Mississippi to state in plain and unparliamentary language 
that the statement of mine to which he referred Avas a falsehood, if I 
caught the word aright. Mr. President, tliis not being the place to measure 
with any man the capacity to violate decency, to violate the rules of 
the Senate, or to commit any of the improprieties of life, I have only 
to say that if the Senator-—the member from Mississippi—did impute, 
or intended to impute to me a falsehood, nothing except the fact that 
this is the Senate, would prevent my denouncing him as a blackguard 
and a coward. Let me be more specific, Mr. President. Should the 
member from Mississippi, except in the presence of the Senate, charge 
me by intimation, or otherwise, with falsehood, I would denounce him as 
a blackguard, a coward, and a liar! And understanding what he said as 
I have, the rules and proprieties of the Senate are the only restraint upon 
me.” 

Lamar: “Mr. President, I have only to say the Senator from New York 
understood me correctly. I did mean to say just precisely the words, 
and all that they import. I beg pardon of the Senate for the unparlia¬ 
mentary language. It was very harsh; it was very severe; it was suN\ as 
no good man would deserve, and no brave man would Wear.” 

—In U. S. Senate, 1879. 

ENCOUNTER WITH STANLEY MATTHEWS, U. S. SENATE, 1878 

“There was another-—Jefferson Davis—Mr. President; shall I not be 
permitted to mention his name in this free American Senate, which has 
been so free to discuss and condemn what it has adjudged to be his 
errors? One who has been the vicarious sufferer of his people, the soli¬ 
tude of whose punishment should lift him above the jibe and jeer of pop¬ 
ular passion; but whose words will stand forever upon the record of history; 
not defiance, not in triumph, but in the sad and grand memoranda of 
the, earnest spirit, the lofty rhotives of the mighty struggle Avhich, how¬ 
ever mistaken in its ends and disastrous in its results, Avas inaugurated 
by those who believed it to be in the interest of representative liberty 
and constitutional government.” 

“Lamar was very many-sided and accomplished, the most interesting 
and lovable of men, very much at home in European courts, especially in 
that of England. He was a man among men and a lion among clever 
women. * * * I rather think that he was the biggest brained of all 



GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


409 


the men I liave met in Wasliington. lie possessed the courage of his 
convictions. A doctrinaire, there was nothing of the typical doctrinaire, 
or theorist, about him. He really believed that cotton was king, and 
would compel England to espouse the cause of the South.” 

—2 Henry Watterson''s Avtobiogfaphy, 18-21. 


PEN-PICTURE OF LORD BROUGHAM 

“No man ever commanded the applause of listening senates, or could 
better rouse the depths of popular enthusiasm. His boundless command of 
language, his audacity, his memory, his animal spirits and ,social powers, 
gave- him the lead everywhere. His. striking, grotesque appearance 
added to the effect of his voice and manner; a tall disjointed frame, 
strong bony limbs and hands; strange angular motion of his arms; the 
incessant jerk of his harsh but expressive features; the exquisite modula¬ 
tions of his voice, now thundering in the loudest tones of indignation, 
and now subdued to a whisper vdiich penetrated to the very walls of the 
House of Commons, and riveted the attention of the audience; a power 
of mingling tenderness and scorn, argument and invectiveness, all con¬ 
tributed to -give him the magical influence a great actor exerts over a 
crowded theatre. 

“Yet in the midst of his triumphs, the companions of his early life and 
those best acquainted with his character, knew that liis extraordinary 
gifts did not include all the elements of true greatness. He wanted the 
moral elevation which inspires confidence and respect; more essential 
than genius to the highest achievements and the most lasting fame. 
At times his eccentricity rose to the, vei:ge of insanity, as if the reins by 
which he guided-his fiery temper; which had slipped from his, hand. At 
the bar were greater and, better advocates; on the bench were more sure 
and learned judges; in science he made no real discoveries; in letters, 
notwithstanding the prodigious activity of, his pen, he has left no work of 
lasting celebrity; and although as an orator he was, in the best days, 
unequaled, he himself outlived the evanescent glories of his eloquence. 

Hence it has come to pass,, within fifty years of his most brilliant 
period, and within ten of his death that the figure of Brougham has 
become somewhat indistinct. The generation which was fascinated by his 
eloquence and aroused by the endless coruscations and evolutions of 
his character is passing, and has become difficult to preserve a faithful 
record of so strange and wonderful a phenomenon. That which remains 
and must ever remain as the noblest memoria] of his life, is his unvarying 
adherence to the progress of liberal opinions, to the reform of the law, to 
popular education, to the emancipation of the negro race from slavery, 
and to. the maintenance of peace. In this sense, he was, as he was once 
portrayed by an accomplished caricaturist of the day, a citizen of the 
world. Of every human right. Brougham was a champion; of every 
human vTong, an avenger.” 

•—Henry Reeve, 0th ed. Rrilariiiica, Vol. k, p. 378: 



FRANKLIN K. LANE (1864-1921), California 


A VIEW OF DEATH 

“It is Wednesday afternoon and I am now sitting up in bed talking to 
my good friend Cotter. Until yesterday I did not clearly visualize 
any one thing in this room and did not know that it had a window except 
that there was a place that noise came through, but I did not know that 
it had a yellow oak door that stared at me with its great big square 
eye all day and all night. Last Friday about 10 in the morning, I took 
the step that I should have taken months ago, yes, years ago. Today, 
tentatively, I crawled onto a chair and ate my first mouthful of solid 
food. But four days ago I managed to shave myself and I am regarded 
as pretty spry. 

“I have seen death come to men in various ways, some rather novel 
and Western. I once saw a man hanged, and I have seen several men shot, 
and came very near going out that way myself two or three times, but 
always the other fellow aimed poorly. I was being shot at because I 
was a newspaperman, and I should have been shot at. There must be 
public concern in what is printed, as well as its truth, to justify it. That 
is something that newspapers should get to know in this country. After 
the earthquake in San Francisco I saw walls topple out upon man. 
And I have had more intimate glimpses still of the picturesque and of 
the prosaic ways by which men come to their taking off. 

“But never before have I been called upon to deliberately walk into 
the valley of the shadow, and say what you will, it is a great act. _ I 
have said during the past months of endless examination, that a man with 
little curiosity and little humor and a little money, who was not in too 
great pain, could enjoy himself studying the ways of doctors and nurses 
as he journeyed the invalid’s path. It was indeed made a fiowery path 
for me, as much as any path could be in which a man suffered more 
humiliation and distress and thwarting and frustration, on the whole, 
than he did pain. 

“But here was a path, the end of which I could not see, was not com¬ 
pelled to take it. My latest doctor advised me against taking it. I could 
live some time without taking it. It was a bet on the high card with 
a chance to win and I took it. For two days I had knowledge that this 
operation was to take place at this time and my nerves had not been 
just as good as they should have been. Those men who sleep twelve 
hours perfectly before being electrocuted have evidently led more tran¬ 
quil lives than I have or have less concern as to the future. Ah, now I 
was to know the great secret! For forty years I had been wondering, 
wondering. Often I had said to myself that I should summon to my mind 
when this moment came some words that would be somewhat a synthesis 
of my philosophy. Socrates said to those who stood by after he had 
drunk the hemlock ‘no evil can befall a good man whether he be ahve 
or dead.’ I don’t know how far from that we have gone in these 2,400 
years. The apothegm, however, was not apposite to me, because it 
involved a declaration that I was a good man, and I don’t know anyone 
who has the right to so appropriate himself, and I had come to the con¬ 
clusion that perhaps the best statement of my creed could be fitted into 
the words, ‘I accept ’ wliich to me meant that if in the law of nature my 
individual spirit was to go back into the great ocean of spirits my one 
duty was to conform. ‘Lead kindly light’ was all the gospel I had. 
I accepted.’’ 

—Said by Secretary of the Interior for 7 years under President 
Wilson, just before his death at the hospital, Rochester, Minn., 
May 18, ’21. 






GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


411 


THE PIONEER 

“The pioneer tracked through the yielding treacherous snows; forded 
swift-running waters; crept painfully through rocky gorges where Titans 
had been at play; clambered up mountain sides, the sport of avalanche 
and of slide; dared the limitless land without horizon; ground his teeth 
upon the bitterest dust of the desert; fainted beneath the raw and ruth¬ 
less sun; starved, thirsted, fought, was cast down but never broken, 
and he never turned back. Here he stands at last beside this Western 
sea the incarnate soul of his insatiable race—the American pioneer. 

* * * His sons are they who have cut these continents in twain, who 

have slashed God’s world as with a knife, who have gleefully made the 
rebellious seas to lift man’s ships across the barrier mountains of Panama. 
This thing the sons of the pioneer have done—it is their prayer a thing 
done for man. And here on this spot this pioneer had called his son 
to speak with modesty as is becoming in a strong man, of many things 
done; how they have filled the night with jewelled light conjured from 
the melting snows of the far off mountains; how they talk together across 
the world in their own voices; how they baffle the eagles in their flight 
through the air and make their way within the spectral gloom of the 
soundless sea; how they reach into the heavens and draw down food out 
of the air to replenish the wasted earth; how with the touch of a knife 
they convert the sinner and with the touch of a stone dissolve disease. 

* * * In blue and gold, in scarlet and purple, in the green of the 

shallow sea and the burnt brown of the summer hill-side, he has made 
the architecture of the centuries to march before their eye in column, 
colonnade and court. Athens and Rome are not far memories to the 
pioneer.” 

—Franklin K. Lane in Address at Opening of San Francisco Ex¬ 
position, Feb. 20, 1915. One of the notable addresses of American 
History. 


JUDGE J. M. WAYNE ON WEBSTER 

Webster visited Savannah, in 1847. Hon. J. M. Wayne, one of the 
judges of the Supreme Court, welcomed him. His address contains the 
following paragraph, illustrative of Mr. Webster’s influence before the 
most august tribunal in the Union. Judge Wayne thus addressed him: 

“When the late Thomas Gibbons determined to hazard a large part of 
his fortune in testing the constitutionality of the laws of New York, 
limiting the navigation of the waters of that state to steamers belonging 
to a company, his own interest was not so much concerned as that of the 
right of every citizen to use a coasting license upon the waters of the 
United States, in whatever way his vessel was propelled. It was a sound 
view of the law, but not broad enough for the occasion. It is not unlikely 
that the case would have been decided upon it, if you had not insisted 
that it should be put upon the broader constitutional grounds of commerce 
and navigation. The court felt the application and force of your reason¬ 
ing and it made a decision releasing every creek and harbor, river and bay 
in our country from the interference of monopolies, which had already 
provoked unfriendly legislation between some of the states, and which 
would have been as little favorable to the interests of Fulton as they 
were unworthy of his genius.”— Harvey's 'Reminiscences of Webster,' 1^3. 



HUGH S. LEGARE 1789 184S), South Carolina 


ORATORY 

“Considering as we do the masterpieces of tliis great orator (Dem¬ 
osthenes) as the true and only models of popular eloquence—as its 
beau ideal—not Greek, nor Attic, not ancient, not local or transitory, 
or . peculiar as Lord Brougham vainly imagines them to be, but made 
like Apollo or the Parthenon for all times and all nations, and worthy 
of study and imitation wherever genius shall be called to move masses 
by the. power of the living word, we. know not how we can do anything 
more pitiable or more acceptable to our readers, than to fix their atten¬ 
tion, for a few moments, upon the excellencies which distinguish him 
beyond every other orator that has ever appeared in any period of the 
world’s history.”— Hugh Su'into.n Legare, 1 Writings of Legare, p. ^44- 

MILTON 

“Milton’s poetry is addressed to the learned. It bears upon ever3^ 
line of it the impress of vast erudition and consummate art. It is true 
he is the greatest master of the sublime that any language has to boast 
of—^eater than Shakespeare^—greater than Dante—greater than Homer. 
But it requires study and reflection, objects of comparison and a competent 
familiarity with literature, to perceive the amazing magnitude of this 
glorious orb. A vulgar eye might glance over him a thousand times 
and still mistake his ‘ocean of flame’ for a star of an inferior class. This 
is a great obstacle to his popularity, and it is one not less formidable 
but he is deficient in pathos and in topics of general interest.” 

—Hugh S. Legare (1789-1843), S. C., in review of Thos. Moore's 
Life and Letters of Lord Byron, 2 I^egare's Writings, p. 407. 

LORD MANSFIELD 

“Mansfield invented nothing. He was called upon to expound the 
contracts of merchants, and he did so with the assistance of special 
juries at Guidhall by the lights of jus gentium. He had before him, 
besides the monuments of ancient civil law, and the learning of the 
commentators the French ordonnance de la marine, and-the commentarj^ 
of Valin, and he did no more than sanction b^- authority of judicial 
decision, and accommodate, in some few instances, to the usages of his 
own country, the principles which he found developed in those great 
depositories of wisdom and equity.”— Legare's Revieiv of Kent's Com¬ 
mentaries. 2 Writing's, 109. 

BLACKSTONE 

“Even Blackstone, with all his prepossessions in favor of whatever 
is English, admits that before his time ‘the theoretical, elementary parts 
of the law had received a very moderate share of cultivation,’ and al¬ 
though his own Commentaries have abridged the studies of professional 
men, and made a certain knowledge of legal principles accessible to mere 
amateurs, yet we think that they have by no means superseded the 
necessities of future labors in the same vineyard. There is, in spite of 
all the pompous eulogies that have been passed on that work, a great 
deal of justness in Horn Tooke’s remark, that ‘it is a good gentleman’s 
law-book, clear, but not deep.’ The truth is, that ‘the learned com¬ 
mentator’ was anything but an original or philosophical thinker. He 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


4i:^ 

has done nothing more than fill up the outline sketched by Sir Matthew 
Hale (this was the opinion of Thos. Jefferson and John Austin).” 

— Legare's Revieic of Kent's Commentaries, 2 Writings, 110-11. 

CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL 

“Although the great man who presides over the Supreme Court of 
the U. S. (this was written in 1826) does not indeed, display the same 
exquisite elegance and felicity of diction that Lord Stowell docs, but 
he is second to no judge that ever lived, in some of the most important 
attributes of judicial character; in depth and comprehensiveness of 
expression, in a logic, which in general (for, alas even Judge Marshall 
has erred), is proof against all sophistry and against w'hich no sophistry 
is proof in a word, in large, sound pervading good sense, which is sat¬ 
isfied only with the fullest and fairest views of a subject, but which, wdiere 
it is once satisfied seldom fails to impart its owm convictions to others.” 
— -Legare's Reviews of Kent's Commentaries. 

LORD STOWELL 

“Lord Stow^ell abounds in so many charms and graces that his decrees 
deserve to be cited as models of style and wall bear comparison with the 
most finished compositions of our English classics at the same time it 
is difficult to treat such subjects with greater ability and accumen or 
with more enlarged philosophy.”— Legare's Review, Kent's Commentaries. 

JOHN C. CALHOUN 

“Calhoun’s theory is ended in fanatieism. Nullification is, with him, 
it seems, wffiat the French called in indec fixe-a monomania, in short, 
he is quoad hoc (to this extent), stark mad, just as H. (probably Hayne) is, 
and one or tw/o more of their leaders. It is really lamentable to think 
that Calhoun’s pre-eminent abilities as a politician have been so woefully 
misapplied. There is nobody to be compared with him in the management 
of men and affairs, in mere discussion he is not equal to Webster, whose 
genius besides has a beauty and elegance that the other is quite destitute 
of. I have no hesitation in saying, however, that he is by far the fittest 
man in the country for the presidential chair, and that, even now, I 
have no doubt, power would cure him of his metaphysical delusions as 
it did once before.” 

— Legare's private correspondence, Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 15, 
lS3f. 1 Writings, 217. 

TASTES, CHARACTER AND PASSIONS DECIDE OUR DESTINY 

“No man is free to dispose of himself according to his enlightened 
judgment. Our tastes, character, our ruling passions, these are our 
destiny.” 

— Legare's letter to A. Huger, from Brussels, Dec. 15, 183^. Writ¬ 
ings, 2,17. 

THE FRENCH 

“If liberty consists in a readiness to rush into scenes of blood and out¬ 
rage, in the ferocity of a Tartar horde, thirsting for plunder and conquest, 
in rudeness of manners, violence' of passions, and the most concentrated, 
impenetrable, conceited egoisme, in wearing mustacLios and red pant¬ 
aloons, and elbowing women into gutters that bound the sidewalks, then 
the French are a free ])eople; but according to my old-fashioned notions 
of liberty, they are at this moment more unfit to be citizens of a republican 
country'than they WTre in ’93. They think of nothing and desire nothing 


414 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


but war and sensual pleasures. If they can only cover themselves with 
crosses and stars for victories gained in foreign countries, live upon 
contributions extorted from their unwilhng alhes, and deal with beauty 
and booty of subjected nations at their discretion, one form of govern¬ 
ment is precisely the same in their eyes as another. Nay, they prefer 
the one that enables them best and most certainly to achieve these 
things. I don’t mean to say that there are not, among the men of fortune 
and education, especially among the mercantile classes, many, many 
individuals of sounder views and feehngs than these, but of the great 
body of the Parisians and the French generally (and remember, equality 
is perfectly established among them) I have no hesitation in affirming 
that I think them utterly unfit for government of laws as contra-dis¬ 
tinguished from one of men. Indeed, I am more than ever inclined to 
think that liberty is an affair of idiosyncracy, and not destined to spread 
very far beyond the Anglo-Saxon race, if even they keep it very much 
longer.”— Legare's Private Correspondence, 1 Writ., 20Jf. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON 

“Dr. Johnson is a horribly bad writer. His artificial periods and his 
pomposity of phrase to express the boldest common-place, are insupport¬ 
able to me. Yet, his criticism, in everything that does not soar above a 
certain height, is usually very sensible. For the subhme or the pathetic, 
he had neither soul nor ear to comprehend them. Nothing can be more 
unworthy of the mighty theme than his way of treating Milton, except 
his superficial notes of Shakespeare. From his praise of Pope’s Homer 
as a translation, his insignificant insinuaton that the best scholars have 
more pleasure in reading the ‘bhnd old man,’ so perverted (the transla¬ 
tion is a good English poem, hut —), than in his own matchless verse, and 
his absurd remarks on ‘Samson Agonistes’ and Greek tragedy, I shrewdly 
suspect the Doctor was no Greek scholar at all; nay, I am sure of it. Latin, 
I dare say, he knew to a certain extent, prosody especially, but for deep 
learning .he had none. His talent is colloquial, ingenious argument, 
quick turns of thought, ready, pointed witty repartee, clothed frequently 
in metaphor which ’ooks like reasoning, and does often bear a great 
abundance of maxims and moralities, uttered with oracular solemnity, 
even when rather trivial, and withal a taste for elegance, though false, 
and a lively but not subhme fancy, these quahties, aided by a very 
considerable and various literature, and by an invincible confidence in 
himself and a most dogmatical supercihousness in regard to other people, 
account for his prodigious celebrity in that day of talker'^ and clubs, 
and will secure for him a certain (greatly curtailed, no doubt) reputation 
with posterity. But he is in Ms true element when he speaks of Dryden, 
Milton was above Ms pitch. He had not as much heart as head, and not 
as much soul as heart, and is never either very original or very profound.” 

— Legare, from ^Journal of the Rhine,' 1836, Writings, 130. 

WISDOM—THE END OP LIFE 

“The great end of fife is the learning to he wise, not for purposes of 
vamty and ostentation, but of happiness in myself and usefulness to 
others. I wish I could impart to you some of the pMlosophy wMch is 
beginmng at last to reconcile me to the world, wearisome and evil as 
it is. You may be sure that the best of all morahsts is pleasure. One 
learns temperance from being always tempted to excess, and content¬ 
ment with little, by experiencing the vamty of wealth and honors.” 

— Legate's Letter to his sister from Brussels, May 3, 1831^. Writings, 

237-8. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


415 


BENEFITS OF ART AND SCIENCE 

“The love of art and science, that is to say, the love of truth and beauty, 
when it becomes an engrossing habitual passionate feeling is worth more 
than all the gifts of fortune. There is one of its good effects which I 
have never seen pointed out, though it is impossible to overrate its 
importance. It elevates one’s sense of his own dignity and at the same 
time makes you feel that it is a dignity which the world can neither 
give nor take away. Thus it mitigates, if it does not utterly cure, the 
worst of all diseases of our fallen nature (I know that forbidden tree is 
called the tree of knowledge), that, indeed, by which man fell as angels 
did before us, a craving, restless, self-tormenting ambition. This seems 
paradoxical, and yet it is strictly true, for you may set it down for a 
universal truth, that the greatest lover of art like true lovers of your 
own sex, ask no dowery with their mistresses but their own complete 
perfections; and just by so much their power of expressing it is diminished, 
and affectation and artifice take the place, in what they do, of all eloquent 
nature.’’— Legare's 1 Writings, 21^1. 

ENGLAND’S POWER 

“I know that in some of the graces of pohshed society, in some of the 
arts of an elegant imagination that in the exact sciences and in mere 
learning and general intellectual cultivation some nations have excelled, 
perhaps, many equaled, England. But, in that civilization which, as 
I have said before, it is the great end of modern pohtical economy to 
promote, and which is imme^ately connected with the subject before 
you, which at once springs out of, and leads to, the accumulation of capital 
and the distribution of wealth and comfort through all classes of a com¬ 
munity, with an immense aggregate of national power and resources, 
that civihzation which enables man to ‘wield these elements, and arm 
him with the force of all their legions’ which gives him dominion over all 
other creatures and makes him emphatically the lord of the Universe, 
that civilization which consists not in music, not in playing on the flute 
as the Athenian hero said, but in turning a small city into a ^eat one; 
in that victorious, triumphant, irresistible civihzation, there is nothing 
recorded in the annals of manMnd that does not sink into the shades of 
the deepest eclipse by the side of England.” 

—From Legares speech on the ^Spirit of the Suh-Treasuryf delivered 
in Congress, Oct., 1837. 1 Writings, 30^. 

GOOD BENCH—HOW OBTAINED 

“The only means of having a good bench is to adopt the English plan, 
give liberal salaries to your judges, let them hold their offices during 
good behavior, and when they begin to exhibit symptoms of senility 
and decay, hint to them that their pensions are ready to be paid them. 
The last is a necessary part of the system, but it is what the American 
people can never be brought to submit to. They are economical (God 
save the mark!) and, therefore, will not spend money without a present 
and palpable quid pro quo, they are metaphysical, and, therefore, they 
will not violate what is called, we know not why, principles. They 
deem anything preferable. Extinguish the light of Kent and Spencer 
submit to the drivehngs of dotage and imbecihty, nay, even resort to 
the abominations of an elective judiciary system, anything rather than 
adopt the plain, manly, and only sure means of securing the greatest 
blessing but liberty, which civil society can attain to, the able adminis¬ 
tration of the laws.” 

— Legare's ^Review, of Kent's Commentaries.' 2 Writings, 1J^1. 


416 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


GREAT MEN OF GREECE—UNPRINCIPLED 

“There is scarcely a great man of Greece whose biography is free from 
some of those dark stains, which no virtues would now be thought 
sufficient to compensate, and no glory to conceal. Without citing the 
examples of such men as Themistocles and Lys'ander, notoriously, and 
even for their own times, remarkably unprincipled, however, gifted and 
celebrated men, Plutarch has scarcely a hero who would pass muster as 
a gentleman now. Timoleon, for instance, has been pronounced by 
Heeren and others the most perfect model of a republican in the history 
of the world—a world that has seen our Washington! And we admit that 
we do not think the annals of popular government, in all antiquity, 
offer an example, on the whole, more enviable and winning. Yet, if 
this, biographer is to be relied on, he was accessory to, by permitting as 
barbarous and wanton as the mean vengeance of faction ever practiced.” 
—Hvgh S. Legare. The Democracy of Athens” in N. Y. Review, 
Xo. 10, 18S6. Writings, 1,89. 

THE GREATEST FRENCHMEN 

“The tliree men whose memories are dearest to France, I do not mean 
in the vulgar sense of the word ‘popularity,’ Richelieu, Louis XIV, and 
Bonaparte, will be remembered after all transitory grounds of reputa¬ 
tion and influence shall be passed away, as founders of three military 
posts of Brest, Dunkirk, and Antwerp. The last of these I have often 
visited with interest. Its great importance to the empire of Napoleon 
was well expressed in 1 is saying that it was a pistol loaded and presented 
at the very heart of England. ’ ’ 

—Hugh S. Legare from speech in II. of R.. Washington, D. C., on 
the Advocacy of Pensacola as a Southern Naval Depot, Jan. 11, 
1839. 1 Writings, 332. 

“In Legare’s death the Constitulion Irs lost one of its best friends; 
the Supreme Court one of its brightest ornaments; the country an in¬ 
estimable man, wlose independence, v 1 cse public virtue, whose rare 
endowments, and whose freedom from all the arts of popularity gave full 
assurance of a life of the highest'value to the State. To me, had iiiy 
own career closed before his, a single void of praise from his lips, could 
I have looked back to know it, would 1 ave been as valuable a tribute as 
from any other human being,” 

— Jos. Story, ^Miscellaneous JVritiiigs,' 821,, from Lecture to Students 
of Dane Law School. 

“He trod a career as yet unattempted in this country, a preparation, 
the completest, brought to practical life in its most difficult pursuits; 
mastering by consummate labor, learning enough for a life-time of 
erudition, accomplishments enough for a life-time of leisure, and then 
turning all these to the aid of public performance.” 

— Legare’s Writings, XXIV. 

“As an orator and politician, he rivaled the-splendor of Burke and 
his flashing reach of thought, as a scholar he entirely equaled Gibbon in 
labor and learning, and would have placed himself in parallel with Mans¬ 
field as a lawyer. * * * ^ man far the most remarkable that our 

country has seen, in all accomplishments of public life, he left notliing 
to be lamented in his career except its early close, dying at fifty-five 
years of age.” — Legare’s Biographie al Memoir, pg. LXVIII. 


ROBERT LANSING (1864- ), New York 


CLEMENCEAU 

“Once in the saddle Clemeneeau, contrary to the public estimate of 
his nature, did not ride roughshod over his colleagues. As the presiding 
officer of the Council of Ten his conduct was urbane and considerate, 
although I cannot say the same of him when he presided over the Con¬ 
ference on the Prehminaries of Peace, a position which he assumed with 
the same assurance with which he had assumed the presidency of the 
council. In deahng with the great body of delegates, which met usually 
in the Salle de FHorloge of the Palace of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 
he Hved up to his reputation. He was, in fact, utterly ruthless in pressing 
through the program agreed upon by the Council of Ten. He swept 
aside objections and suppressed interruptions with httle regard for the 
speakers who dared to challenge his will. The way he forced business 
forward, ignoring or rebuking a delegate whom he thought opposed to 
the ppgram, reminded one of the methods frequently employed at an 
American ward caucus a generation ago. His caustic sentences, his 
fluency of speech, increasing in vehemence as he proceeded, and his real 
or assumed passion simply overwhelmed protest and resistance. It 
was in such manifestations of fiery temper and intensity of purpose that 
one understood how the old statesman had won liis politique Le Tigre. 

“No_ one who attended a plenary session of the Conference on the 
Prehminaries of Peace can ever forget M. Clemeneeau as he stood with 
head thrown back between his broad humped shoulders, with the knuckles 
of his ^ay-gloved hands resting on the green table in front of him, and 
with his thick shaggy brows drawn partially over his dark eyes, which 
fairly sparkled as he addressed the delegates. He usuaUy began speaking 
in a dehberate and rather monotonous voice, but with no hesitation or 
break in the even flow of his words. As he proceeded he became more and 
more emphatic, while the rapidity of his utterance increased until it 
suggested the drumming of a macldne gun. He had none of the arts of 
oratory, but his distinct and incisive dehvery compelled attention if 
not applause. He seemed to hurl his words at Ms hsteners. Only occa¬ 
sionally did he employ a gesture, but when he did it was vigorous and 
wholly French. Having fimshed a forceful address he either sank back 
into his great golden chair or, if he desired to check further debate, he 
would state the resolution or decision agreed upon by the Council of 
the Ten before the session, and without a moment’s delay exclaim 
‘Adopted.’ He would then, before anyone could interrupt, take up the 
next item on the agenda, or else add ‘Adjourne.’ 

“Free debate and actual voting by the delegates had no place in the 
proceedings with M. Clemeneeau in the chair. There was an occasional 
attempt at discussion, but the Clemeneeau method discouraged it. 
After listening with a tolerant manner and with his half-closed eyes 
turned toward the ceiling, the old French autocrat would slowly rise 
from his chair, glare fiercely about the room as if to say, ‘We have had 
enough of tMs,’ and ask whether anyone else desired to speak; and 
then before another delegate could collect Ms wits and get to Ms feet 
he would snap out the inevitable ‘Adopte.’ That always ended it. 
* * * No public man in France had had so stormy a career as he. He 
had not won Ms high place by making friends with politicians; he had 
won it by trampling down Ms enemies. He did not owe Ms success to 
a political party or to a faction; he owed it to compelling recogmtion 
of Ms personal strength and ability. He simply reveled in the struggles 
in wMch he was constantly engaged to maintain his position. He never 


418 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


liesitated to pick up the gage of battle, and he entered the conflict with 
all the vigor of youth and all the sagacity of age.” 

—March 12, '21, Saturday Evening Post. 

WOODROW WILSON 

“The trouble was that the President was not prepared to seize the 
opportunity and to capitahze this general popular support. (At the 
Paris Conference.) He came to Paris-without, so far as I know, a defi¬ 
nite outline of a treaty with Germany. He did have a draft of a covenant 
of a League of Nations, but it was a crude and undigested plan, as is 
evident by a comparison of it vdth the document finally reported to the 
Conference on the Prehminaries of Peace. He, of course, had his famous 
fourteen points, and the declarations appearing in his subsequent ad¬ 
dresses as bases of the peace, but they were httle more than a series of 
principles and policies to guide in the drafting of actual terms. As to 
a complete project, or even an outline of terms which he laid before the 
delegates for consideration, he apparently had none; in fact when this 
lack was felt by members of the American commission they under¬ 
took to have their legal advisers prepare a skeleton treaty, but had to 
abandon the work after it was well under way because the President 
resented the idea, asserting emphatically that he did not intend to allow 
lawyers to draw the treaty, a declaration that discouraged those of the 
profession from volunteering suggestions as to the covenant and other 
articles of the treaty. The President not having done the preliminary 
work himself, and unwilling to have others do it, was wholly unprepared 
to submit anything in concrete form to the European statesman, unless 
it was his imperfect plan for the League of Nations. The consequence 
was that the general scheme of the treaty and many of the important 
articles were prepared and worked out by the British and French dele¬ 
gations. Thus the exceptional opportunity which the President had to 
impress his ideas on the conference and to lead in the negotiations was 
lost, and he failed to maintain his controlling position among the states¬ 
men who were, as it turned out, to dictate the terms of peace; while 
his utterances, which had been the foundation of his popularity, suffered 
in a measure the same fate. 

“If the President had adopted the customary method of negotiation 
through commissioners instead of pursuing the unusual and in fact 
untried method of personal participation, the situation would have been 
very different. Without the President present in Paris detailed instructions 
would have been prepared, which could have been modified during the 
negotiations only by reference to Ifirn at Washington. Instructions of 
that sort would of necessity have been definite. There would have been 
no uncertainty as to the objects sought. But with the President on the 
ground written instructions seemed to him, and possibly were, superfluous. 
He was there to decide the attitude of the United States and give oral 
directions concerning the minutest detail of the negotiations as the ques¬ 
tions arose; and since diplomatic commissioners are in any event only 
agents of the President and subject always to his instructions, the Ameri¬ 
can commissioners at Paris possessed no right to act independently or 
to do other than follow the directions which they received, which in this 
case were given by word of mouth. As these directions were meager and 
indefinite and as they did not include a general plan, the situation was 
unsatisfactory and embarrassing to the Resident’s American colleagues. 

“I doubt if Mr.Wilson had worked out, even tentatively, the apphcation 
of the principles and precepts which he had declared while the war was 
in progress, and which had been generally accepted at the time of the 
armistice as the basis of peace. The consequence was that he must 
have had a very vague and nebulous scheme for their introduction into 
the treaty, because many of his declarations required accurate defi- 


GREAT BAYINCiS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


419 


nition before they could be practically applied to the problems which 
awaited solution by the conference. 

“Natm'ally there was an air of uncertainty and a feeling of helplessness 
in approaching the treaty terms which prevented the American commis¬ 
sioners from pressing for definite objects. The whole delegation, the 
President included, lost prestige and influence with the foreign delegates 
by this lack of a program. 

“Here is shown one of the inherent weaknesses of Mr. Wilson which 
impaired his capacity as the head of a diplomatic commission to negotiate 
so intricate a settlement as the treaty with Germany. He was inclined to 
let matters drift, relying apparently on his own quickness of perception 
and his own sagacity to defeat or amend terms proposed by members of 
other delegations. Prom first to last there was no teamwork, no common 
council and no concerted action. 

“It w'as discouraging to witness this utter lack of system, when system 
was so essential. The reason was manifest. There was no directing 
head to the American commission to formulate a plan, to organize the 
work and to issue definite instructions. It is my belief that this fault in 
the negotiations, so far as the United States is concerned, was responsible 
in no small degree for some of the more undesirable settlements which 
were incorporated in the treaty of peace. The other heads of states 
held long daily conferences with their fellow commissioners and principal 
expert advisers, at which pending questions were debated at length and 
opinions were freely expressed as to the attitude which should be as¬ 
sumed in view of the national interests involved. Not so the President. 
He seldom met the American commissioners as a body—in fact only 
nine times prior to his first retimn to the United States on February 14th, 
—and then, except in regard to the covenant, the discussions were des¬ 
ultory and of a general character except on two or three occasions. The 
President at these meetings did most of the talking, seldom asking advice. 
They left an impression of doubt as to just what he was seeking to obtain. 
They might have been, but were not, useful. Diming the entire period 
of the negotiations President Wilson summoned the experts to meet as 
a body with the American commission only once, on June third, when 
the German and Austrian treaties were completed. * * * 

“If the President failed in the full reahzation of his purposes it was not 
out of lack of good intentions, but rather because of inexperience in 
negotiations, of desire to exercise an independent judgment, of exaggeration 
of the importance of adopting the covenant, and over-confidence in the 
motives of others. * * * 

“The President, as we review his career as a peace commissioner at 
Paris, stands forth as one of the great dominating figures of the con¬ 
ference, who reacted the zenith of his power over the public mind of 
Europe, over the delegates and over the negotiations at the fii’st plenary 
sessions of the conference. The reasons for his dechne in power, a fact 
which can hardly be questioned, may be one or more of many. First, 
the loss of Ills superior position by intimate personal intercourse with the 
European statesmen, which could have been avoided if he had remained 
in the United States or if he had declined to sit as a delegate at Paris. 
Second, his evident lack of experience as a negotiator and his failure to 
systematize the work of the American commission and to formulate 
a program. Third, his exclusiveness and apparent determination to 
conduct almost every phase of the negotiations and to decide every 
question alone and independently. Fourth, his willingness to arrange 
all settlements behind closed doors with the three other heads of states 
present at the conference. Fifth, his unavoidable lack of knowledge of 
the details of some of the simple as well as the intricate problems to be 
solved. Sixth, his insistence on the adoption of the covenant of the 
League of Nations, as drafted, and the overcoming of oppostion by 
concessions to national aspirations, the justice of which was at least 


420 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


disputable. Seventh, his loss of the initiative in the formulation of the 
provisions of the treaties. Eighth, his apparent abandonment of the 
smaller nations and his tacit denial of the equality of nations by con¬ 
senting to the creation of an oligarchy of the Great Powers at the con¬ 
ference and in a modified form in the covenant. And ninth, the impres¬ 
sion, which greatly increased after liis return from the United States in 
March, that the American people were not a unit in support of his aims 
as to a League of Nations, disclosed by the report made to the Peace 
Conference. * * * 

“The drafting of a definitive treaty including a deta led convenant 
for the League of Nations seriously impaired his infiuence, his prestige 
and his reputation. His insistence upon the incorporation of the cove¬ 
nant in the treaty lost him the world leadership which was in his grasp.” 

—One of his four articles in the Saturday Evening Post, March 19, 

1921. 

LLOYD GEORGE 

“While Mr. Lloyd George was vague as to general principles, which ac¬ 
counted largely for the fiuid state of his judgments, he had made certain 
promises during the parliamentary elections of December, 1918, which 
he considered binding upon him in the negotiations at Paris. Of these, 
Germany’s payment of the costs of war and the pubhc trial of the Kaiser 
by an international tribunal of justice attracted the most attention. He 
was very insistent that the treaty should make these promises good, 
although he must have known that the first was impossible and the second 
unwise as well as in defiance of all legal precepts. In addition to his 
political commitments he was determined to obtain the cession of the 
principal German colonies in Africa and the German islands in the 
Pacific south of the equator, control of Mesopotamia, a protectorate 
over Egypt, a practical protectorate over Persia in the event that Persian 
affairs came before the conference, the destruction of the German mer¬ 
chant marine as a rival of Great Britain in the carrying trade of the 
world. To these well-defined national policies which were essentially 
selfish and material, the British Prime Minister clung tenaciously and 
was able to obtain nearly all of them by skillful maneuvering. His idea 
seemed to be that if these objects were attained the decisions as to other 
matters were directly affected, and that to study them thoroughly was 
a needless expenditure of time and energy. It was very evident to any¬ 
one who was famihar with the subjects that he counted on his innate 
slirewdness, on his skill as a ready debater, and on the promptings of his 
experts to handle the questions satisfactorily when they were presented 
to the Council of Four or Council of Ten. * * * 

“Though he was thus prone to interfere with others during a debate, 
Mr. George showed displeasure or annoyance if he was interrupted when 
speaking or if his statements were challenged. He held his place in the 
British House of Commons by constant forensic battles. He had used 
all the arts of a popular pohtical leader to maintain his position, and he 
had succeeded more by reason of his dynamic personality and by fear¬ 
lessly denying his enemies than by the superiority of his learning or the 
strength of his position. All people admire fearlessness and instinctively 
follow a leader who takes the offensive instead of standing on the defen¬ 
sive. They seem to care far more for this trait than they do for depth of 
knowledge or soundness of logic. His appreciation of this quality of 
human nature and Ms constant exploitation of it in Ms political career 
made Lloyd George the lYime Minister of Great Britain. NotMng daunt¬ 
ed Mm. No antagonist was too strongly intrenched to discourage Mm. 
His quick wit, his ready tongue and his self-confidence made Mm what 
he was, a great parhamentary leader. In some ways Ms attainments 
as a pohtician were not dissimilar to those of M. Clemencau, tho’ the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


421 


latter appeared to be more constant and—to use the vulgar term— 
less shifty than his British colleague. 

“In the councils at Paris these qualities of mind were by no means so 
effective as in the House of Commons or on the political platform. M. 
Clemencau sagaciously cast them aside, but Mr. Lloyd George could not. 
They were his heavy artillery. He would have been lost without them. 
In the negotiations conducted by the heads of states and foreign ministers 
of the five Great Powers accurate knowledge counted, and intellectual 
ability claimed first place. Without Mr. Balfour’s aid and without the 
constant advice of his subordinates, Mr. Lloyd George would, I fear, 
have been decidedly outclassed. As it was, his truculence of manner 
when hard pressed in debate, his attempts to ignore substantial argu¬ 
ments which he was not prepared to answer, and his frequent efforts to 
enhance the importance of a fact by emphatic declaration were methods 
that certainly did not carry conviction. 

“Yet nobody could come into intimate association with Mr. Lloyd 
George without falling under the spell of his personal charm. One might 
dislike his methods as those of a pohtieian; one might even feel a measure 
of contemptuous surprise that he dared to discuss a question of ter¬ 
ritory without knowing exactly where the territory was; and there 
might be a feeling of irritation that he changed his mind whenever 
is seemed to him expedient; but vdth it all one liked him. His cheeriness, 
his vivacity, his never-failing good nature and his delightful humor were 
assets which counted greatly in his favor.” 

—Saturday Evening Post, March 26, 1921. 

Mr. Lansing’s book on the peace conference at Paris is one of the most 
tragic books I have ever read. It will be read a hundred years hence as 
a study of the human soul. It contains the confessions of a man who 
set down in his ^ary from day to day that certain things were wrong 
and that he acquiesced in them, knowing that they were wrong.” 

— Dr. C. F. Aked, pastor of the First Congregational Church, Kansas 
City^ Mo. 


A LEGAL PRECEDENT 

“The defendants had constructed a reservoir on their land to collect 
and hold water for the purpose of working their mill. Under that land 
were situated underground workings of an abandoned coal mine, the 
existence of which was unknown to everybody. After the reservoir 
had been filled, the water found its way down to those underground 
workings through some old shafts, and escaping through them flooded 
the plaintiff’s colliery. The defendants had been guilty of no negligence 
either in the construction or the use of the reservoir, and they contended 
that in the absence of negligence they were not liable. The plaintiff 
contended on the other hand that the defendants, having brought and 
stored the water upon their land for their own purposes, were bound to 
keep it safely there, and that if it escaped to adjoining lands and did 
damage the defendants were liable for the breach of this duty whether 
or not it Avas due to negligence.” 

The Court, Mr. Justice Blackburn, had to reason out an analogy 
from the liability for other kinds of dangerous things, e. g. Avild animals; 
and finally it set up the principle (in the Avords of the Court, subsequently 
approved by the House of Lords), that: “The person avLo for his own 
purposes brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely 
to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it at his peril, and if he does not 
do so, is prima facie ansAveral le for all the damage which is the natural 
consequence of its escape, or the ‘doctrine of absolute liability. 

—Paul Vinogradoff’s 'Common Sense in Law,' 187-8. Rylands v. 

Fletcher, 1868. 



FREDERICK W LEHMANN (1853- ), Missouri 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

“As the Nation was nearing this last great crisis (the Civil War), 
Abraham Lincoln appeared among the forces of Union and Freedom, 
and to him they turned more and more for guidance and leadership. 
And who was he that he should attempt the accomphshment of work 
which so often throughout the life of the Nation its greatest statesman 
had undertaken, and had failed to do ? 

“He was an American, in whose veins blended the blood of the North 
and the South. He was born to the hardships and privations of pioneer 
civihzation, and suffered and sustained them throughout his youth, and 
well into manhood. Education, so far as the schools afforded it, did but 
little for him, but he learned well the lessons of self-help and self-rehance 
which the isolation of the back-woods enforced upon its people. But 
neither in his ancestry nor in his surroundings was he singular. There 
were many men of his time whose heredity and environment were essen¬ 
tially like his own. What, then, made him the man he was ? We can 
answer this question when we can answer why, among all the English¬ 
men of his day, there was but one Shakespeare, and why, in a later 
generation of Scotchmen, there was but one Burns. That which dis¬ 
tinguished a man among Ms neighbors, that in wMch he differs from those 
who were born and bred as he was, is too subtle for determination by 
human analysis. It discloses itself as he develops with the years, but it 
is not the product of the years. We say it was born with the man, and 
we see that it was not born with his brother. SometMng may be bred 
into the bone, and sometMng may be trained into the flesh, but neither 
breeding nor training, nor both of them, explain for us the master spirits 
of the world. Heredity and environment are the two parts of a common 
mold in wMch the clay of humanity is cast, but it must be that beyond 
these there is, nowand then, at the interval of many years, the touch and 
impress of the creative hand itself, imparting sometMng of the divine 
spark we call gemus. * * * Men thought Mm weak, because in so many 
tMngs he was complaisant, but they found that when the depths of Ms 
nature were stirred and his convictions aroused he was absolutely self- 
reliant and indomitable in his purpose, and proved himself, not the 
creature, but the master, of circumstance. * * * 

“The depressing conditions of his early life imbued Mm with sadness 
and melancholy, but the gloom of these was lightened by that humor 
wMcluis so close akin to pathos. That he was given to telling stories, 
and that these sometimes had the smell of the barnyard, but never 
the odor of the brothel, we must believe, for the traditions are too in¬ 
sistent for dispute, but he was not the people^s jester, as some who did 
not know Mm were disposed to believe. The man who once puts on the 
cap and bells cannot doff them, as more than one in our public life has 
found, to Ms cost. It was the earnestness of his nature, the seriousness of 
his purpose, which impressed the nation, for men never followed a clown 
or buffoon tMough Are and blood, as they followed Mm. Had he been 
lightminded, he would have broken under the burden of his lot. Great 
strength of will was requisite to acquire the education he got, in spite 
of the invidious bars against him. A few months of school, the Bible, 
Aesop, Shakespeare, Bunyan and Burns, and what was the result? 
The highest culture to be found in the political literature of America. 
And he knew Ms power. No man could express Ms thoughts for him. 
Ambitious young reporters in the West attempted it, but with kindly 
hand he put their parapMase aside and held to his own words. The 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


423 


scholar of his party in the East advised eliminating, as in had taste, the 
closing words of the first inaugural, but his judgment of their propriety 
was not shaken. Read his public letters, papers and addresses. They 
are profoundly serious. A gleam of humor, very seldom an anecdote, 
and when occurring brought at once to its point; notliing coarse, with 
but one exception, and this apologized for in the speech itself; rarely 
quotations from others, and always brief when his own ideas are to be 
expressed, and throughout, a simple, strong statement of his meaning 
in the purest, cleanest Saxon English to be found outside the Bible, and, 
in some of its strains, as in the second inaugural, rising to the loftiest 
ranges of the Bible itself.” 

—Frederick W. Lehmann, St. Louis, Mo. From address delivered 

at Lincoln Memorial. 

LINCOLN AS A LAWYER 

“He (Lincoln) proved his capacity more and more with the passing 
years. Douglas in the first debate of 1858, speaking in all sincerity, 
said, ‘Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable 
skill everything which they undertake.’ He demonstrated this in his 
career as a lawyer. In the field of practice which he chose for himself, 
he was conspicuously successful. In the matter of income, indeed, he 
was surpassed by many of his contemporaries, for his own pecuniary 
interest in his business was for him its least attractive feature. He 
cherished high ideals of his calling. The law to him was the ministry 
of justice. In the present day vocation of advising how the mandates 
of the law may be evaded without incurring its penalties, he would have 
made a sorry showing. His abilities displayed themselves at their best in 
the open contests of the courtroom, when human rights were involved. 
He was a trial lawyer, with skill to follow the truth through a tangled 
mass of testimony, and an advocate with power to enforce upon others 
the convictions of his own mind.”— F. W. Lehmann, idem. 

Mr. Lehmann was a ranchman and a farmer’s helper in S.-W. Iowa; 
studied law and practiced in Nebraska City, Nebr., with Judge Mason; 
moved to Des Moines, thence to St. Louis, Mo., in 1890, to take charge 
of the assistant solicitor-generalship of the Gould System. He remained 
in that position five years. Has been President of the American Bar 
Ass’n.; Solicitor-General of the United States, and is one of the leading 
lawyers of the West. 


LORD KENYON’S INVECTIVE AGAINST A PRISONER 

Lord Kenyon thus addressed a dishonest butler who had been convicted 
of stealing large quantities of wine from his master’s cellar: 

“Prisoner at the bar, you stand convicted on the most conclusive evi¬ 
dence of a crime of inexpressible atrocity—a crime that defiles the sacred 
springs of domestic confidence, and is calculated to strike alarm into the 
breast of every Englishman who invests largely in the choicer vintages 
of Southern Europe. Like the serpent of old, you have stung the hand of 
your protector. Fortunate in having a generous employer, you might 
without dishonesty have continued to supply your wretched wife and 
children with the comforts of sufficient prosperity, and even with some of 
the luxuries of affluence; but dead to every claim of natural affection, and 
blind to your own real interest, you burst through all the restraints of 
religion and morality, and have for many years been feathering your own 
nest with your masters bottles.” 

—F. E. Heard's Oddities of the Law.'* 



JAMES HAMILTON LEWIS (1869- ), Illinois 

PERORATION IN DEFENSE OF AN OUTCAST WOMAN 

“Counsel says this woman should be punished. Punished? Can 
any punishment smpass that which already has fallen upon this home¬ 
less, hopeless, helpless woman? The doors of tomorrow are shut upon 
her; the hand of friendship has been withdrawn. The faces she loved 
have been averted; the friends departed. She is destined as one who is 
a plague, to walk forever alone, alone forever and forever. To Society 
an outcast, to love a stranger; to the world a woman suspected. Which 
one of us would care to have a sister or a woman dear to us go through 
the life she will face even after freedom? Her days are darkness; her 
nights are death! For her there is no freedom—all is punishment, all is 
imprisonment.”— In defense of Dora McDonald, in Chicago, III. 

INTERNATIONAL LAW 

“The thing called ‘international law’ was never more than a thing 
proposed and accepted by organizations calling themselves nations, 
and this was for the security of themselves. It had the object of pre¬ 
scribing and maintaining some rule of action among collections called 
‘Government.’ This was to secure to each the particular system each had 
decreed for its internal welfare—a mere consent compact, applying to 
all in such manner as would serve the uses of each. There was no forum 
to enforce—no process to exact—the obedience of any decree or ordinance. 
Tliis condition makes mockery of the meaning of law. Our earliest history 
informs us that the Judean governments had a system of rules among 
their tribes as intercontinental law; then the Greeks, by a convening 
in groves, speaking through the voice of representatives, adopted the 
system of the Israehte teachers. Then followed Rome, which by force 
of her arms maintained her domination. She adopted the Codes of 
Pomponius and of Tribonian and estabhshed a system of co-operative 
conduct for the uses of such countries, and provinces as depended 
upon Rome’s imperial central authority. The Saxons copied the rules 
of governmental regulation wliich had been proclaimed in Ireland. 
From all these, in some composite adaptation, come the rules to our mod¬ 
ern world, and under the kings of the 12th century these took the first 
form of an International Code. * * * We have deduced some of the rules 
that but lately we fancied were in existence and prevailing in our own time 
and generation. First, the right of any neutral to sell to any other neutral 
through seas extending to the shores of belligerents. Second, the uni¬ 
versality of the distribution of breadstuffs to the non-fighting population 
of any belligerent. Lastly, the freedom of locomotion of the peoples of 
any land among any other land at peace, and the.carrying of their peace¬ 
ful commerce to any peaceful zone, or into any other zone with peaceful 
object. Finally, as the last doctrine enunciated in our present generation 
and the most modern of international law, the privilege of proposed 
mediation on the part of any government at peace for the securing 
of peace of the others. This with the object of protecting and avoiding 
the nation mediating from being embroiled. 

“I mention these, that these few may, in their course, accent with their 
evidence the revolution this day affords, and now all international laws, 
which we heretofore esteemed as fixed, have, hy the exigencies of events, 
ceased to exist as accepted doctrines in the world. 

“Europe is at war! Twelve nations have closed their temples of love 
to open their furnaces of hate. ’ The continents of Europe, Asia and Africa 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


425 


are ablaze 'with flame. America alone is exempt. America stands singly 
at peace, with hands outstretched to the great Jehovah, praying that 
peace may be on earth and to men good vdll, Yet we are asking of our 
hearts how long will we be able to maintain our people in patience—om* 
nation in rehgious regard for the love of their brother man? America 
is human and can be the subject of all passions that surge in the hearts 
of her fellows all over the world. We know that it is the violations of the 
essential privileges of man, as expressed in the international law of nations, 
that quickly arouse and ever explode a people to action, and when it is 
a people of emotion as is ours, the action is dire and dreadful.” 

—Address on the U. S. International Law-Giver of the World of 

Tomorrow” before the N. C. Bar Ass'n., at Asheville, N. C., 1915. 

Mr. Lewis was born in Va., reared and schooled in Ga. and Va., moved 
to and practiced law in Washington; moved to Cliicago, Ill., in 1903; 
has held various State and National offices; was U. S. Senator from 
Ill., being appointed in ’12, and elected in ’13, his term expiring, ’19. 
Is author of several law books, and was late law lectiu’er in Northwestern 
University, and Webster College of Law, Chicago. 


ROSCOE CONKLING 

“Roscoe Conkling was created by nature for a great career. That he 
missed it was entirely his own fault. Physically he was the handsomest 
man of his time. His mental equipment nearly approached genius. 
He was industrious to a degree. His oratorical gifts were of the highest 
order, and he was a debater of rare power and resources. But his intoler¬ 
able egotism deprived him of vision necessary for supreme leadership. 
With all his oratorical power and his talent in debate, he made little 
impression upon the country and none upon posterity. His position in 
the Senate was a masterful one, and on the platform most attractive, 
but none of his speeches appear in the schoolbooks or in the collections 
of great orations. The reason was that his wonderful gifts were wholly 
devoted to partisan discussions and local issues. 

“His philippie against George W. Curtis at the Republican State con¬ 
vention at Rochester was regarded as the high-water mark of his oratory. 
* * * The assault upon Mr. Curtis was exceedingly bitter, the de¬ 

nunciation very severe, and every resource of sarcasm, of which he was 
master, was poured upon his victim. His bitterness was caused by Mr. 
Curtis’s free criticism of him on various occasions. The speech lasted 
two hours. * * * When Conkling’s career closed as a national 

leader, there was hardly an active member of the Republican party in 
N. Y., of national reputation, unless he had secured it before Mr. Conkling 
became the autocrat of State politics. * * * .jjis peculiar temper¬ 

ament was a source of great trouble to his lieutenants. They were all able 
and loyal, but he was intolerant of any exercise on their part of independ¬ 
ent judgment. This led to the brealdng off of all relations with the two 
most distinguished of them—President Arthur and Governor Cornell. 
A breach once made could not be healed. A bitter controversy in debate 
with Mr. Blaine assumed a personal character. In the exchanges common 
in the heat of such debates Blaine ridiculed Conkling’s manner and called 
him a turkey-cock. Mutual friends tried many times to bring them to¬ 
gether; Blaine was always willing, but Conkling never. * * * Yet 

Senator Conkling’s career at the bar was most successful, and there was 
universal sorrow when his life ended in the tragedy of the great blizzard.” 

— C. M. Depew, ^Memories of Eighty Years', 79-86. 



WM. DRAPER LEWIS ( 


), Pennsylvania 


MARSHALL, A GREAT JUDGE 

“If we read Marshall’s opinions in the four great cases interpreting the 
Constitution—Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons 
V. Ogden, and Cohen v. Virginia—we will see that the great issue involved 
was interpreted according to its evident meaning,—the important part 
of the same decided; while we have some doubt in regard to the matter 
treated, we will not have as to the correctness of Ms conclusions on 
questions of first importance. 

“Thus in Marbury v. Madison, we may doubt whether the appointment 
to a Federal office is complete until the appointee’s commission is de¬ 
livered to Mm, but not of the duty of the judiciary to disregard con¬ 
stitutional legislation; in McCulloch v. Maryland, we may question that 
‘the power to tax is the power to destroy,’ but not the power of the 
Federal Government to create a corporation as a means of executing one 
of its enumerated powers; in Gibbons v. Ogden, we may think, in spite 
of Marshall’s opinion to the contrary, that the legislation of Congress 
and of the State of New York were not in conflict, but we will not 
dispute the correctness of the definition of the scope of the Federal 
power over commerce; wMle in Cohen v. Virginia, as the court 
confines itself to the simple question of jurisdiction, we will accept 
Marshall’s argument in all its parts as sound. TMs abihty to take a 
legal question on wMch a large number of persons have preconceived 
opimons, the product of their political prejudices, analyze it in all its 
parts in such a way that the conclusion reached is admitted by the great 
majority of each successive generation of students to be inevitable, is 
the best test of Marshall’s greatness as a lawyer.’’ 

— Wm. Draper Lewis,—2 Great American Lawyers, pp. 37^-5. 

WHY MADE CHIEF JUSTICE 

“Marshall was really made Chief Justice by John Adams, in payment 
of a political debt, and because of Ms logical masterly argument of a lav^ 
question wMle a member of Congress. Thomas Nash, alias Jonathan 
Robbins, an Irish mate of the boatswain of the British frigate ‘Her- 
mione,’ had mutinied and with others killed the principal officers and 
carried the boat into a Spamsh port, and was in consequence surrendered 
to the British authorites by President Adams, under the Jay treaty, 
and was apprehended in Charlestown, S. C., in 1799, and Ms extradition 
asked by British authorities. Adams referred the matter to Judge Bee, 
the U. S. Judge at Charlestown, and the Judge, acting as a commissioner 
and carrying out the suggestion of the President, turned Mm over to Great 
Britain, where he was tried by court-martial, convicted and hanged. The 
affair caused great excitement. Nash had claimed American citizenship. 
The Republicans (the Jefferson party) took the ground that he had the 
right to a judicial trial, as provided by the Constitution; that the Presi¬ 
dent’s action should be condemned, etc. Resolutions were introduced 
in the House to tMs effect. It was in opposition to these that Marshall 
addressed Congress, March 4, 1799. He maintained— 

“1st. That the case was witMn the Treaty. 

“2nd, That the case was for Executive and not judicial exercise. 

“It was a great speech, one of the best in our political annals, and it is 
equal to any of Ms great judicial decisions —analytical, clear, concise, 
logical, convincing. After the argument the President’s position was 
substantiated, by a large majority, and Marshall’s great reasomng powers 
recogmzed.”— 2 'Great American Lawyers,' Art. 'Marshall,' pp. 34^2-Jf.. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


427 


Gallatin, who was the leader on the Republican side, was chosen to 
answer M^shall, and when prodded to do so, exclaimed: ‘Answer it 
yourself. For my part, I think it unanswerable.’ The vote stood 61 to 
65 in the House when the parties were nearly equal in numbers in oppo¬ 
sition to Livingston’s resolutions against Adams. Jefferson, a bitter 
enemy of Marshall, said, ‘Livingston, Nicholas and Gallatin distinguished 
themselves’ on the one side, John Marshall greatly, on the other.’ This 
IS high praise from Jefferson, as he was especially virulent toward an 
enemy. , 


PAUL ON MARS HILL 

“I saw Paul, alone and unfriended, on the hill over against the Parthe¬ 
non, despised by the Greeks because he was a Jew, and despised by the 
Jews because he was half Greek; a fanatic to the one, a heretic to the other; 
suspected even by his own church, and setting over against this beautiful 
temple and this impressive pageantry and this all-powerful priesthood— 

words, a breath, a palpitation of the air, 
audible for a moment—then gone forever. And yet! the pageantry has 
long since ceased to impress, the priesthood have long ceased to influence, 
the sacrifices are no longer offered, the music is no longer heard, the temple 
is only a beautiful ruin—but Paul’s speech on Mars Hill, preserved we 
know not how nor by whom, will live as long as reason, vivified by imag¬ 
ination and surcharged with emotion, has power to move the mind of 
man. As I reflected on this contrast, the history of the intervening 
centuries, which the guide in the morning had skillfully epitomized in a 
few sentences, came back to me mth its lesson. I felt rather than defined 
even to myself the difference in spirit between Paul and the later religion¬ 
ists who, in the same place, have endeavored to reform religion. The 
Christians turned the Parthenon into a Christian church, put up an 
altar, painted on the walls some frescoes of saints—the dim outhne is 
still discernible there—substituted for the pagan ritual a Christian 
ritual, and the pagan creed a Cliristian creed. The Mohammedans 
followed; tore down the altar, tore down the cross, effaced the frescoes, 
knocked the heads off from the images, and put up a tower for their call 
to prayer. The later Christians came in again, tore down the tower, and 
effaced as far as they could the signs of the Turldsh occupation. Each 
rehgionist saw in creed and ritual and altar and image a symbol of a 
hated religion, and tried to reform it by destroying it and putting another 
synibol in its place. Paul criticised neither ritual, creed or image. He 
praised the pagans for their religion. ‘I have come to help you,’ he said 
in effect, ‘to understand better the God you worship but confess you do 
not know.’ I never felt so strongly the folly of all this controversy about 
creeds and rituals and images—the mere symbols of rehgion; I never 
felt to strongly the splendid courage of this man standing alone in the 
midst of all this pagan symbolism and offering absolutely no substitute 
for it all and no criticism on it all; offering only a thought, an idea, a 
truth—invisible, impalpable, immaterial, unsymbolical, and therefore 
eternal.” — Lyman Abbott, 'Impressions of a Careless Traveler,^ 12If.-26. 



JUSTIN LEWIS 


REPRODUCTION 

“The principle of reproduction stands next in importance to the elder- 
born correlative self-preservation, and is equally a fundamental law of 
existence. It is the blessing which tempers with mercy the justice^ of 
expulsion from Paradise. It was impressed upon the human creation 
by a beneficent Providence to multiply the images of Himself, and thus 
promote his ovm glory and the happiness of His creatures. Not man alone, 
but the whole animal and vegetable kingdom are under an imperious 
necessity to obey its mandates. From the lord of the forest to the mon¬ 
ster of the deep, from the subtlety of the serpent to the innocence of the 
dove, from the elastic embrace of the mountain kalmia to the descending 
fructification of the lily of the plain, all nature bows submissively to this 
primal law. Even the flowers which perfume the air with their hues 
are ‘but curtains to the nuptial bed,’ The principles of morality, the 
policy of the nation, the doctrines of the common law, the law of nature, 
and the law of God, unite in condemning as void the condition attempted 
to be imposed upon the widow.” 

— Mr. Justice Lewis—Commonwealth v. Stauffer, 10 Pa. State. 


MOTHERHOOD 

“The mother who bore us laid down her life in order that she might 
give a new life to the world. I do not suppose that any man can compre¬ 
hend the strange feeling of hope and fear which struggles within the awe¬ 
struck heart of the expectant mother. She goes down to the brink of 
that mysterious stream which is both the river of life and the river of 
death, and knows not whether the ferryman will come to carry her away 
to the unknown land or out of the unknown land will bring a new life 
to her. When the new born child is laid in her arms her travail pain is 
not over. Just begun is that mother’s experience, which is at once the 
greatest fear and the greatest hope, the greatest joy of human life. Not 
only in those few hours of physical anguish does she suffer; her life is 
one long, joyful, self-sacrifice—joyful because the greatest joy of life is 
the joy of self-sacrifice. She daily lays down her life for her child. She 
delights in menial services rendered to him which she has never before 
rendered to anyone; she abandons the society in which market place she 
was wont to exchange services of good will, and devotes herself to the 
society of the babe who takes all and gives nothing. The songs she 
sings to her babe are her only music; her chief literature is the stories 
she reads to the growing child; her most instructive studies are those in 
which she is his leader. She fears nothing so much as that he may 
become estranged from her and from his home and fall into vicious habits; 
she hopes for nothing so much as that he may grow up to be gentle and 
strong, just and generous, courageous and wise; and she experiences a 
remorse in his incipient vices far greater than any he will ever know, 
unless in later years the memory of her tears comes out of the past to 
teach him. 

“Motherhood is one long travail because it is the supremest revelation 
which human experience affords of life-giving, and life-giving is always 
costly to the giver. This it is which makes motherhood the most revered 
of all offices and mother the most sacred of all words.” 

—Lyman Abbott, ^^What Christianity Means to ilfe,” pf. 1^7-8 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865), Illinois 

THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH 

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth in this 
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the prop¬ 
osition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great 
civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated, can long endure. We met on a great battle-field of that war. 
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place 
for those who here gave their Uves that that nation might five. It is 
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger 
sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow 
—this ground. The brave men, hving and dead, who struggled here, have 
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world 
will httle note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never 
forget what they did here. It is for us, the living rather, to be dedicated 
here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far 
so ably advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the ^eat task 
remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased 
devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of de¬ 
votion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died 
in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; 
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall 
not perish from the earth.” 

— Lincoln's two-minnte Dedication speech of the National Cemetery 
at Gettysburg, Pa., Nov. 19, 1863. 

Says John Bigelow; “The Gettysburg speech is, perhaps, on the whole, 
the most enduring bit of eloquence that has ever been uttered on this 
continent, and yet one finds in it none of the tricks of the forum or the 
stage, nor any trace of the learning of the scholar, nor the need of it.” 

Edward Everett, who made the principal speech of the day, said to 
Lincoln:—“I should be glad if I came as near the central idea in two 
hours, as you did in two minutes.” 

THE BIXBY LETTER 

“Dear Madam:—I have been shown in the files of the War Department 
a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the 
mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I 
feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should at¬ 
tempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But 
I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be 
found in the thanks of the Repubhc they died to save. I pray that 
our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, 
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and 
the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice 
upon the altar of Freedom.”— Letter to Mrs. Bixhy, Nov. 21, 186J^. 

Says Geo. S. Boutwell:—^“I imagine that all history and all literature 
may be searched, and in vain, for a finer tribute, so touching, so com¬ 
prehensive, so fortunate in expression, as this.” 

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration 
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the 


430 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. 
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; 
and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that 
any man should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their 
bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we 
be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of 
neither has been answered fully. 

“The Almighty has His own purposes, ‘Woe unto the world because of 
offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man 
by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery 
is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, 
but which, having continued through His appointed time. He now wills to 
remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible .war, as 
the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein 
any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living 
God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray 
—that tins mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.” 

—Second Inaugural. 

LEONARD SWETT ON LINCOLN 

“Leonard Swett, himself one of the greatest advocates and a trial lawyer > 
seldom equaled by any man of his generation — to many of whose 
arguments the writer has listened with rapt attention —has said that if 
Lincoln ever had a superior before a jury —and the more intelligent the 
jury the better he was pleased —he, Swett, never knew him. Mr. Swett 
went further and declared that in his younger days he had listened to 
Tom Corwin, Rufus Choate, and many others of equal standing at the 
bar, in the trial of cases, but that Mr. Lincoln at his best was more 
sincere and impressive than any of them, and that what Mr. Lincoln 
could not accomplish with a jury no other man need try.” 

—John T. Richards' ^'The Lawyer-Statesman—L ncoln,” 21-22. 

“Yet, if God will that it (the war) continue until all the wealth piled by 
the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 
another, drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so 
still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and right¬ 
eous altogether’.” 

—At Washington, D. C., March 4, 1865—Second Inaugural. 

Lincoln wrote Thurlow Weed, Mar. 15, ’65,—“I expect the latter 
(the 2nd Inaugural Speech) to wear as well—perhaps better than any¬ 
thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. 
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of 
purpose between the Almighty and them.” 

Of this Inaugural Speech, Fred W. Lehmann, of St. Louis, Mo., says:— 
“In some of its strains, it rises to the loftiest ranges of the Bible itself.” 

(The three samples above given, are generally conceded to be the 
greatest and best utterances made by Lincoln). 

Lincoln appeared as counsel in the Supreme Court of Ill. (the highest 
court in the State) in 175 cases, a record rarely equaled by any lawyer 
even, to-day. Says one of his latest biographers. 

—John T. Richards, in his 'Ahraham Lincoln—the Lawyer-States¬ 
man,' p. 68. 

“Had he lived to witness the reahzation of that vision which he saw 
so beautifully expressed in his first inaugural when ‘the mystic chords of 
memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to eyery 
living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land’ should ‘swell the 


(;reat sayings by great lawyers 


431 


chorus of the Union,’ it is believed that he would have proved himself 
the greatest constitutional lawyer of the 19th century, and many of the 
mistakes and horrors of the Reconstruction period would have been un¬ 
known to our country’s history.” —John T. Richards' — ^Lincoln,' 68. 

THE TWO PRINCIPLES,—RIGHT AND WRONG—RULE THE 

WORLD 

“That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this 
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be 
silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles,—^right 
and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have 
stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to 
struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other 
the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it 
develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You toil and work and 
earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether 
from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own 
nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as 
an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” 

— From Debate with Douglas, at Alton, III., Oct. 15, 1858. 

STATES’ RIGHTS 

“If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of 
States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably 
unmade by less than all the parties who made it ? One party to a contract 
may violate it,—break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to law¬ 
fully rescind? * * * Plainly the essence of secession is the essence of anarchy. 

“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, 
and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions 
and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever 
rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity 
is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is 
wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy 
or despotism in some form is all that is left.” 

—From the First Inaugural Speech, Mar. J, 1861. 

THE LAWYER 

“I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for 
a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have 
been moderately successful. The leading rule of the lawyer, as for the 
man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow 
which can be done today. Never let your coirespondence fall behind. 
Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all 
the labor pertaining to it which can be done. When you bring a com¬ 
mon law suit, if you have the facts for doing so, write the declaration at 
once. If a law point be involved, examine the books, and note the author¬ 
ity you rely on upon the declaration itself, where you are sure to find it 
when wanted. The same of defense and pleas. In business not likely 
to be litigated,—ordinary collection cases, foreclosures, partitions, and 
the like,—make all examinations of titles, and note them, and even 
draft orders and decrees in advance. This course has a triple advantage; 
it avoids omissions and neglect, saves your labor when once done, 
performs the labor out of court when you have leisure, rather than in 
court when you have not. Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced 
and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able 
and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him 
business if he cannot make a speech. And yet, there is not a more fatal error 


432 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If anyone, 
upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the 
drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance. 

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise when¬ 
ever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real 
loser—^in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer 
has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be 
business enough. Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely 
be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than 
he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in 
titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral 
tone ought to be infused into the profession which would drive such 
men out of it. 

“The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread 
and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both 
lawyer and client. An exhorbitant fee should never be claimed. As a 
general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a 
small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common 
mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was 
still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. And when you lack 
interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the 
performance. Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance. Then 
you will feel that you are working for something and you are sure to do 
your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee note—at least not be¬ 
fore the consideration service is performed. It leads to negligence and 
dishonesty—negligence by losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in 
refusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration to fail. 

“There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. 
I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and 
honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears 
improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. 
Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man 
choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular behef— 
resolve to be honest at aU events; and if in your own judgment you cannot 
be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose 
some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, 
in advance, consent to be a knave.”— Notes for a Law Levture, July, 1850. 


THE FIRST INVENTION 

“When Adam observed his nakedness, the observation was not lost 
upon him; for it immediately led to the first of all inventions of which we 
have any direct account—the fig-leaf apron.” 

—From Lincoln's Lecture on ^Discoveries, Inventions, and Improve¬ 
ments,' before the Springfield, III., Library Ass'n., Feb. 22, 1860. 

FREDERICK DOUGLAS’ COMPLIMENT 

“Mr. Lincoln is the only white man into whose presence I was ever 
ushered who did not make me feel that I was a negro.” 

L. E. CHITTENDEN—LINCOLN’S STYLE IN SPEECH 

“Lincoln could give expression to an idea or a principle in fewer and 
more forcible words than any author with whose writings I am acquainted.” 
—'‘Lincoln as a Lawyer," 1894-, Green Bag. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


433 


ARNOLD—ON LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS 

“Both were strong jury lawyers, Lincoln was, on the whole, the strongest 
we ever had in lUinois. Both were distinguished for their abihties in 
seizing and bringing out distinctly and clearly the real points in a case. 
Both were happy in the examination of witnesses, but I think Lincoln 
was the stronger of the two in cross-examination.” 

LINCOLN COLLECTED $500 FROM DOUGLAS 

Abraham Brokaw, of Bloomington, loaned $500 to one of his neighbors, 
and took a note, which remained unpaid. Action was brought, the sheriff 
levied on the property of the debtor and collected the entire amount, 
but neglected to turn over the proceeds. Brokaw employed Stephen A. 
Douglas, who collected the amount from the bondsman of the sheriff, but 
returned to his seat in the Senate at Washington without making a settle¬ 
ment. Like some other great men, Douglas was very careless about 
money matters, and, after appeahng to him again and again, Brokaw 
employed David Davis to bring suit against the Senator. Being , an 
intimate friend and fellow Democrat, Davis dishked to appear in the 
case, and by his advice Brokaw engaged the services of Lineoln. The 
latter wrote to Douglas in Washington that he had a claim against him 
for collection and must insist upon prompt payment. Douglas became 
very indignant and reproached Brokaw for placing such a weapon in 
the hands of an abolitionist. Brokaw sent Douglas’ letter to Lincoln 
and the latter employed ‘Long John Wentworth,’ then a Democratic 
member of Congress from Chicago, as an associate in the case. Went¬ 
worth saw Douglas, persuaded him to pay the money and forwarded 
$500 to Lincoln, who, in turn, paid it to Brokaw, and sent a bill for $3.50 
for his professional services. 

— Wm. Elery Curtis' Ahraham Lincoln, 5 Great American Lawyers, 
^85-6. 

SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY 

“Squatter Sovereignty is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was 
made by boihng the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death,” 
said Lincoln, in his Debate with Douglas, at Quincy, Ill., Oct. 13, 1858. 

LINCOLN’S PHILOSOPHY 

“I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to 
keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is 
said against me won’t amount to anything, if the end brings me out 
wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.” 

NOT BOUND TOJWIN 

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound 
to succeed, but I am bound to hve up to what light I have. I must stand 
with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he is right, and 
part with him when he goes wrong.” 

THE EPITAPH LINCOLN WANTED 

“When I die, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that 
I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower, when I thought a flower 
would grow.” 


434 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


A NEWSPAPER CONTROVERSY 

“No man, whether he be a private citizen or President of the United 
States, can successfully carry on a controversy with a great newspaper 
and escape destruction unless he owns a newspaper equally great with a 
circulation in the same neighborhood.” 

THOROUGHLY STUDIED WORDS 

“Among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a child, I 
used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way that I could 
not understand. I can remember going to my little bed-room, after 
hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father; and spending 
no small part of the night trying to make out what was the exact meaning 
of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, although I 
tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it; 
and when I thought I had got it I was not satisfied until I had repeated^ 
it over and over again, until I had put it in language plain enough, as 
I thought, for any boy I knew to. comprehend. This was a kind of a 
passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when 
I am handling a thought, until I have bounded it north and bounded it 
south and bounded it east and bounded it west.” 

—5 Great American Lawyers, Jf65. 

Said by Lincoln to a Hartford, Conn., clergyman, in 1860, who asked 
where he attended college, to get such a style as he (Lincoln) had made a 
political speech in which the clergyman was so impressed by the language 
and logic of his address, and Lincoln told him that he ‘never went to 
school more than six months in his life.’ 

AUTHORITIES USED IN FIRST INAUGURAL 

Lincoln, in preparing his first Inaugural, told Herendon to get him 
Clay’s speech of 1850, Jackson’s proclamation against nullification, and 
Webster’s reply to Hayne—the latter of which, he deemed “the greatest 
piece of oratory in American literature.”— HapgoocVs Lincoln, 182. 

ON QUARRELING 

“The advice of a father to his son, ‘Beware of entrance to a quarrel, 
but being in bear it that the opposed may beware of thee!’ is good, but not 
the best. Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of him¬ 
self can spare time for personal contention. Still less, can he afford to 
take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and the 
loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more 
than equal rights; and yield lesser ones though clearly your own. Better 
give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. 
Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.” 

— Nicolay and Hay s Lincoln, Vol. 1, p. 212. 

SUMMARY OF LINCOLN’S CAREER 

“His greatness consisted not in his eloquence as an orator, nor liis 
shrewdness as a lawyer, nor his tact as a diplomat, nor his genius in 
planning and directing military affairs, nor his executive ability, but in 
iiis absolute self-control, his unselfishness, the full mastery of his wisdom, 
the strength of his convictions, his sound judgment, his absolute integrity, 
his unwavering adherence to the principles of truth, justice, and honor, 
his humanity, his love of country, his sublime faith in the people and in 
Republican institutions. He was without malice or the spirit of resent- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


435 


merit, without envy or jealousy, and he suppressed the passions to a degree 
beyond that of most men. He entered the Presidency Avith an adequate 
conception of his own responsibilities, but when he saw his duty he did 
it with courage, endurance, magnanimity, and unselfish devotion. * * ♦ In 
four years—four years of battle days—his endurance, his fertility and 
resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. 
Thereby his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, 
his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the center of an epoch.” 

— Wm. Elroy Cvrtis' True Life of Lincoln, S96. 

EFFECTIVE COURT LAWYER—BY HILL 

“Lincoln was recognized as a good jury lawyer long before he won any 
reputation in other lines of legal work. Judge Logan first noted his 
effectiveness in arguments addressed to the bench; but despite his ex¬ 
cellent record in the Supreme Court, where he won a large majority 
of his cases (where he had no less than 172 cases—Ida TarbeU in her 
Life of Lincoln, p. 257, says ‘nearly 100 cases’), he did not gain any 
marked recognition as a court lawyer until well into the fifties. He was, 
however, well qualified for work of this character. His power of analysis, 
pitiless logic, and comprehensive mental grasp of large subjects, all 
combined to make him a formidable opponent in legal discussions, and 
a powerful influence with the courts. * * * Precedents did not make him 
over confident, and they never balked him. Back of the recorded ad- 
judioation, he sought the reason, and if it did not satisfy his mind, he 
could not accept it. Very few lawyers possess sufficient independence 
and orginality for reason of this character, and the average brief, though 
it often displays great ingenuity in recording divergent authorities, rarely 
indicates any real creative thought. Legal argument calls for a higher 
order of abihty than jury work, and it developed Lincoln’s talents for 
logical reasoning until it perfected him to meet and refute the most in¬ 
genious debater of his, or possibly of any other, day.” 

— Hill's ^Lincoln, the Lawyer,' pp. 258-62. 

NOT A GREAT LAWYER—BUT A GREAT ADVOCATE 

“Mr. Lincoln has sometimes been called by his eulogists and biographers 
a great lawyer. It would be more correct to say that he had some of 
the qualities of a great lawyer. But he never became a great lawyer in 
the sense that Alexander Hamilton or Chancellor Kent were great lawyers. 
He did not study enough, he did not devote himself sufficiently, and his 
mind during the greater part of his life was too much occupied with other 
things to make a great lawyer. Practically he knew nothing about the 
‘lucubrations of twenty years’ which the great Enghsh commentator 
said were necessary to make a lawyer. To be a great lawyer, a man must 
know the law. It can only be known by the operations of genius which 
I amounts to intuition, or by years of close application. Mr. Lincoln was 
i not a genius; nor as a lawyer, was he for any considerable length of time 
! a close student. Though not in the strict sense of the term a great lawyer, 
i he was a great advocate, and more successful at the bar than many men 
as an advocate in cases which called out his full powers; he had few 
equals and no superior in the courts of Illinois. For this there were 
two reasons: 1st, he was naturally and conscientiously fair-minded and 
honest, and was the fairest practitioner I ever saw; and, 2nd, he had 
great ability. He was a natural logician, and in the trial of a suit a 
man of overwhelming force and effect.” ' 

—Judge Samuel C. Paries, of Kansas City, Mo., died in Kansas 
City, Mo., Feb. 8, 1917, in his 96th year. He was a contemporary 
of Lincoln's, in Illinois and they were opposed and associated in 
the trial of many cases. The above is from a lecture before the 
Oratorical Ass'n., of Michigan University, Jan., 189^. 



436 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


WEAK ON THE WRONG SIDE OF CASE 

“On the wrong side of a case he was always weak, and, realizing this, 
often persuaded his clients to give up litigation rather than compel him 
to argue against truth and justice. Leonard Swett, of Chicago, for year& 
an intimate associate, and liimself one of the most famous of American 
lawyers,says that sometimes, after Lincoln entered upon a criminal case, 
the conviction that Ms client was guilty would affect Mm with a sort of 
panic. On one occasion he turned suddenly to Ms associate and said, 
‘Swett, the man is guilty; you defend Mm, I can’t,’ and so gave up Ms 
share of a large fee. At another time when he was engaged with Judge 
S. C. Parks, in defending a man accused of larceny, he said, ‘If you can 
say anytMng for the m'an, do it, I can’t; if I attempt it, the jury will see 
I tMnk he is guilty, and convict Mm.’ Once he was prosecuting a civil 
smt, in the course of wMch evidence was introduced showing that Ms 
client was attempting a fraud. Lincoln rose and went to Ms hotel in 
deep disgust. The Judge sent for him; he refused to come. ‘Tell the 
Judge,’ he said, ‘my hands are dirty; I came over to wash them.’ ” 

—HilVs ^Lincoln—the Lawyer,' Ji.98-9. 

The compiler of tMs work took tMs matter up with Judge Parks, 
then living, and he said he remembered the case well, referred to above; 
and that Lincoln did not abandon the case on any Mgh moral ground, 
but for the reason, he could not conceal Ms conviction that the prisoner 
was gmlty —that his face was a mirror, and the jury could read Ms 
tlioughts by looking into Ms face. So, he said:—“Parks, you go ahead 
and try the case, and get Mm out of Ms difficulty, if you can, and I’ll 
sneak away, for if I stay, he’ll surely be convicted.” Judge Parks further 
related that he got a hung jury, though Ms client was guilty as Cain; 
and before the next trial, the prisoner died in jail. 

HENRY C. WHITNEY—LINCOLN AS A LAWYER 

“Mr. Lincoln was not well grounded in the principles of law, nor was 
he a well-read lawyer. He had no intmtive sense of abstract justice, had 
no conception of rules, techmcalities, or hmitations; he knew notMng of 
decisions, except such as came with Ms own experience; he did not approve 
of being hampered by precedents; to Mm estoppels were unjust; he had 
no patience with technicahties as such, desiring to consider every case 
as disconnected with all else, and to be tried on its abstract and unin¬ 
cumbered merits alone. * * * He would try to estabhsh Ms conten¬ 

tion by lo^c. His strength as a lawyer lay in Ms analytical and reasoning 
faculties; i. e., he could apperceive the matter at issue and deduce the 
true concMsion from it with much facihty and strength as he could acMeve 
the same results from moral questions. * * * jjg studied both sides 

of Ms ease, and considered the course of tactics wMch Ms opponent 
would probably pursue qmte as thoroughly as he considered Ms own. 
Nothing moved or excited Mm in the course of a trial. * * * jjis 

ability to separate important and controlhng matters from those wMch 
were secondary was marked, and showed great analytical skill. * * * 

He was probably never exceeded as a story-teller. Was more famihar 
with the Bible than any other book in the language. He verified the 
maxim that it is better to know thorougMy a few good books than to 
read many.”— Henry C. Whitney's LinccAn, VoL 1, 172-200. 

SECOND- INAUGURAL APPROACHES SERMON ON THE MOUNT 

“The second inaugural contains passages wMch approach the divine 
Sermon on the Mount for moral sublimity and supreme elevation of 
thought as closely as a merely human document can do it. It is, in my 
judgment, a sacred classic.”— 1 Whitney's Life of Lincoln, 205. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


437 


PREPARATION TO MEET DOUGLAS 

“The laborious care lincoln took in preparation for his debate' with 
Douglas by studious application from June until the debates began in the 
autumn is of interest. * * * His campaign note-books, when finished, could 
not have been more complete to meet the expected and unexpected 
questions liable to be sprung on him during the debate. He was no longer 
the Abraham Lincoln with leisure for the interests of all callers. He 
hved through laborious days and often into studious nights; and when 
he went forth into that debate it was with a firm foundation of well- 
settled principles, and fully equipped with all liistorical and collaterial 
data possible to be acquired by him on the live political issues of the day. 
Best of all was the complete confidence he had acquired in himself of 
his abihty to meet Senator Douglas, or any other pubhcist North or South, 
in the discussion of the interests and problems then before the country. 
This was no self-asserting egotism. He was the freest from that of all 
men who have ever engaged the attention of the nation.” 

—Henry B. Rankin's Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 131^ 

THE COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH 

“In October, 1859, Lincoln had an invitation from New York to dehver 
a lecture in the Cooper Institute, the subject to be of his own selection. 
He assented, and named, February, 1860, as the time; his subject to be 
a pohtical one. He had mis^vings at first as to his abihty to interest 
an Eastern metropolitan audience. However, his old campaign interest 
and energy came back to him the more he became absorbed in the col¬ 
lection of data upon which to build his speech. He had repeated inter¬ 
views and discussions in the office with Mr. Herndon, going over their 
stores of campaign literature. He was at length fully satisfied in his 
selection of his material and how much he should use in writing out the 
speech. The first and second drafts were cast aside, and the entire 
field traversed anew. Mr. Herndon remarked to me that Lincoln had 
gone over his subjects far too deeply’for him to follow. He only offered 
suggestions. It was delivered Feb. 27, 1860. Horace White, while he 
did not hear it, said of it: ‘As I read the confiicting pages of that speech, 
the confiict of opinion that preceded the confiict of arms, then sweeping 
upon the country like an approaching solar eclipse, seemed prefigured 
Hke a chapter of the Book of Fate. Here again was the Old Testament 
prophet, before whom Horace Greeley bowed his head, saying that he had 
never listened to a greater speech, although he had heard several of 
Webster’s best.” 

—Henry B. Rankin's Personal Recollections of Lincoln, 2It-2 to 2JH. 

LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS AS ORATORS 

“In the elegance of diction and ornate rhetoric, the speeches of Dem¬ 
osthenes and Aechines, those of Pitt, Fox, and Burke, and those of Web¬ 
ster and Hayne, excelled beyond measure those of Lincoln and Douglas; 
but in clearness of statement, close logical reasoning, breadth of com¬ 
prehension, thorough analysis, simphcity and directness in bringing their 
views to the attention and understanding of vast masses of people, no 
other public debates ever equaled them.”— Clark E. Carr, ‘ The Illini,' 257. 

Douglas said this of Lincoln: “Lincoln is an able and honest man, 
one of the ablest men of the nation. I have been in Congress sixteen 
years, and there is not a man in the Senate I would not rather encounter 
in debate.” 

—In letter to Senator Wilson, when Douglas entered the Senate, 

after the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. 


438 


grp:at sayings by great lawyers 


THEO. ROOSEVELT’S TESTIMONY 

“Lincoln was not only the greatest American, but also the greatest 
man, of the 19th century.”— -^Life of Thos. H. Benton,’ 

LORD CURZON ON THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH 

“The finest speech in English of the last half century was delivered 
at Gettysburg, a speech made by a man who had been a country farmer 
and a district lawyer, which ranks among the glories and the treasures 
of mankind. I escape the task of deciding which is the masterpiece of 
British eloquence by awarding the prize to Abraham Lincoln.” 

—Said at Cambridge University, Eng. 

JUDGE BREESE ON LINCOLN 

“For my single self, I have for a quarter of a century regarded Mr. 
Lincoln as the first lawyer I ever knew and of a professional bearing so 
high-toned and honorable, as justly and without derogating from the 
claims of others, entitling him to be presented to the profession as a 
model well worthy of the closest imitation.” — Memorial of the Illinois Bar. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN—BY GARFIELD 

“A character so unique that he stands alone, without a model in history 
or a parallel among men. Born to an inheritance of extremest poverty; 
surrounded by the rude forces of the wilderness; wholly unaided by 
parents; only one year in any school; never, for a day, master of his own 
time until he reached his majority; making his way to the profession of 
the law by the hardest and roughest road; yet by force of unconquerable 
will and persistent, patient work, he attained a foremost place in his 
profession.” 

—From address, ^MAncoln and Emancipation,” H. of R., Feb. 12, 1878. 

HENRY WATTERSON ON LINCOLN 

“Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; of what real parentage 
we know not; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor 
fair surroundings; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions, 
bordering at times on madness; without a grace, natural or acquired; 
singularly awkward, ungainly, even among the uncouth about him; 
grotesque in his aspects and ways; it was reserved for this strange being, 
late in fife, without name or fame, or preparation, to be snatched from 
obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and 
intrusted with the destiny of a nation.” 

—Extract from address, December, 1893. 

IMPORTANT CASES 

“The freedom of the Negro Girl, Nance, before the Supreme Court of 
Illinois, in 1839; the Ilhnois Central Ry. case, 1849, involving the taxation 
of the road’s property through McLean County, in which Lincoln won 
for the railway, and got a fee of $5,000; the McCormack Reaper case, 
in Cincinnati, O., 1855, in U. S. Circuit Court, in which he was associated 
with Geo. Harding, the expert patent lawyer, of Philadelphia, Pa., and 
Edwin M. Stanton; opposed by E. N. Dickerson and Reverdy Johnson. 
(Lincoln’s fee being $2,000, his retainer, $500, the largest retainer he 
ever received: he. appeared for Manny, the defendant. It was an injunc¬ 
tion and for damages, $400,000 demanded); Duff Armstrong for murder; 
the Rock Island Bridge case, involving the question of whether a Ry. Co. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


439 


had a right to obstruct the Mississippi River Avith piers, Lincoln appearing 
for the Ry. Co., maintained that ‘one man had as good a right to cross 
a river as another had to sail up or down it.’ This was in 1859.” 

— TarhelVs Life of Lincoln, 257 to 278. 

LABOR SUPERIOR TO CAPITAL 

‘‘The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants 
are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point. From this 
point, however, men immediately diverge. * * * Labor is prior to, 

and independent of, capital; in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could 
never have existed if labor had not first existed; labor can exist vdthout 
capital, but capital could never have existed without labor. Hence 
labor is the superior, greatly superior, of capital.” 

—From address at Wisconsin State Agricnltural Fair, Sept. 30, 

1859. 

COURTS SHOULD NOT BE FINAL 

‘‘If the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the 
whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, 
the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in 
personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, hav¬ 
ing to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands 
of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon 
the court or the judges.” 

—From 1st. Inaugural; also Lincoln and Douglas Debates. 

UNION PERPETUAL—SECESSION UNLAWFUL 

‘‘I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitu¬ 
tion, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if 
not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It 
is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its 
organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express 
provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure 
forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not pro¬ 
vided for in the instrument itself. Again, if the United States be not a 
government proper, but an association of States in the nature of a con¬ 
tract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all 
the parties who made it ? One party to a contract may violate it, break 
it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? It follows 
from these views that no State, upon its own motion, can lawfully get 
out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally 
void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the 
authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, 
according to circumstances.”— From 1st. Inaugural. 

HIS DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS 

‘‘In the meantime, he had private sorrows and trials of a painfully 
afflicting nature. He had loved and been loved by a fair and estimable 
girl, Ann Rutledge, who died in the flower of her youth and beauty, 
and he mourned her loss with such intensity of grief that his friends 
feared for his reason. Recovering from his morbid depression, he bestowed 
what he thought a new affection upon another lady, who refused him. 
And finally, moderately prosperous in Ms worldly affairs, and having 
prospects of political distinction before him, he paid his addresses to 
Mary Todd, of Kentucky, and was accepted. But then tormenting doubts 
of the genuineness of Ms own affection for her, of the compatibility of 


440 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


their characters, and of their future happiness came upon him. His 
distress was so great that he felt himself in danger of suicide, and feared 
to carry a pocket-knife with him; and he gave mortal offense to his 
bride by not appearing on the appointed wedding day. Now the tortur¬ 
ing consciousness of the wrong he had done her grew unendurable. 
He won back her affection, ended the agony by marrying her, and be¬ 
came a faithful and patient husband and a good father. But, it was no 
secret, to those who knew the family well, that his domestic life was full 
of trials. The erratic temper of his wife not seldom put the gentleness 
of his nature to the severest tests; and these troubles and struggles, 
which accompanied him through all the vicissitudes of his hfe, from the 
modest home in Springfield to the White House, at Washington, adding 
untold private heartburnings to his pubhc cares, and sometimes pre¬ 
cipitating upon him incredible embarrassments in the discharge of his 
public duties, form one of the most pathetic features of his career.” 
—Carl Schurz’s Essay on Lincoln, No. 133 ^Riverside Literature 
Series,’ 20-21. 

(For a fine review of Lincoln’s legal and political career, see 
Lyman Trumbull.) 

THE FIRST INVENTION 

“The great difference between Young America and Old Fogy is the 
result of discoveries, inventions, improvements. These, in turn, are the 
result of observation, reflection and experiment. * * * All nature, 

the whole world, material, moral and intellectual, is a mine; and in 
Adam’s day, it was a wholly unexplored mine. Now, it was the destined 
work of Adam’s race to develop, by discoveries, inventions and improve¬ 
ments, the hidden treasures of this mine. But Adam had nothing to 
turn Ms attention to the work. If he should do anytMng in the way of 
inventions, he had first to invent the art of invention, the instance at 
least, if not the habit, of observation and reflection. As might be expected, 
he seems not to have been a very observing man at first; for it appears 
he went about naked a considerable length of time before he even noticed 
that obvious fact. But when he did observe it, the observation was not 
lost upon Mm; for it immediately led to the first of all inventions of wMch 
we have any direct account—the fig-leaf apron.” 

—Abraham Lincoln. Lecture on ‘^''Discoveries, Inventions and 
Improvements,” at Springfield, III., Feb. 22, 1860. 

TOWERING GENIUS 

“Towering gemus disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions Mtherto 
unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story upon the 
monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it 
is glory enough to serve under any cMef. It scorns to tread in the foot¬ 
steps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns 
for distinction; and if possible it will have it, whether at the expense of 
emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen. It is unreasonable then to 
e::^ect that some man possessed of the loftiest gemus, coupled with am¬ 
bition to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among 
us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be umted 
with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally 
intelligent, to successfully frustrate Ms designs. Distinction will be Ms 
paramount object; and although he would willingly, perhaps more so, 
acquire it by doing good as harm, yet, that opportunity being past, 
and notMng left to be done in the way of building up, he would set 
boldly to the task of pulling down.” 

—Speech by Lincoln, on ‘The Machinations of Ambitious Men’ 
Jan. 27, 1837. 

S. P. Chase: “Of all the gveat men I have ever known. Chase is equal 
to about one and a half of the best of them.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


441 


STATUE OF LINCOLN UNVEILED IN LONDON 

The recent unveiling of the Saint Gaudens statue of Lincoln in London 
attracted world-wide attention. Reports in the American Press were 
rather meager, but the Manchester Guardian, which has just arrived 
from across the seas, contains a very full account of the ceremony which, 
for the benefit of the readers of the National Enquirer, is herewith 
reproduced; 

“The Saint Gaudens statue of Lincoln, the gift of the American to the 
British people, was unveiled this afternoon by the Duke of Connaught 
on the site presented by the Government in the Canning enclosure 
opposite Westminster Abbey. The event was made the occasion of 
an impressive demonstration of Anglo-American friendship. Before the 
ceremony there was a big meeting in the Central Hall, when Mr. Ehhu 
Root, who came over from the Hague to make the presentation on behalf 
of his country, gave an address, fine both in spirit and language. After¬ 
wards the Prime Minister spoke briefly, ending with a signi&ant note 
when he said that, ‘This torn and bleeding earth is calling today for the 
help of the America of Abraham Lincoln.’ 

“Lord Bryce,who of all living Englishmen perhaps is most highly honored 
in America, presided over the meeting. The American Ambassador 
and Colonel House were among the Americans on the platform, and 
among the distinguished people present were Lord Weardale, chairman 
of the Anglo-American Society, through which the gift of the statue was 
made; Lord Reading, Lord Crewe, Lord Beatty, Lord Phillimore, Lord 
Desborough, Sir Macnamara, and other members of the Government as 
well as many other representative people of both nations.” 

“Tho’ Mr. Lincoln was a natural born lawyer, he had yet studied 
profoundly the principles of the common law.”— E. B. Washhurne. 


ABBOTT’S TRIBUTE TO HIS WIFE 

“My wife’s conservatism tempered my radicalism, and to my rever¬ 
ence both for her sentiments and for her judgment I owe the fact that I 
have been able to move forward with a progressive age without dis¬ 
respect for or embittered conflict with the men and women of more 
conservative temper. In times of success her ambition for her husband, 
always overrunning his achievement, has served to temper if not wholly 
to prevent my self-conceit. In time of failure, when I have wholly lost 
faith in myself, she never lost faith in me, and her courage forbade my 
discouragement. She died in Germany in 1907, six weeks before a golden 
anniversary would have been celebrated. Her dust reposes in the well- 
ordered cemetery at Hildesheim, shaded by the trees and covered with 
the carefully tended flowers which she loved so well. The monument 
we have chosen for her in this country is a cut-leaf maple, planted on 
our golden wedding day in our home grounds among the trees all of which 
were selected by her and planted under her direction. Only a living 
thing could memorialize one so full of life. I do not think her dead, nor 
have I lost her companionship. Her ambition for me keeps me young at 
seventy-eight; her faith in me still inspires me with faith in myself. 
And in every serious question which arises in fife I ask myself, first, 
what would Jesus Christ counsel me to do, and, second, what would my 
wife counsel, and my answer to the second question helps me to get the 
desired answer to the first.”— Lyman Abbott''s Reminiscences, 76-7. 



ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON (1746-1813) 

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

“We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives. 
The treaty which we have just signed has not been- obtained by art or 
dictated by force. Equally advantageous to the two contracting parties, 
it will change vast solitudes into flourishing districts; from this day 
the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank. 
The English lose all exclusive influence in the affairs of America. Thus 
one of the principal causes of European rivalries and animosities is about 
to cease. 

“The United States will re-establish the maritime rights of all the 
world, which are now usurped by a single nation. These treaties will 
thus be a guarantee of peace and concord among commercial States. 
The instruments which we' have just signed will cause no tears to be shed; 
they prepare ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human 
creatures. The Mississippi and Missouri will see them succeed one 
another and multiply, truly worthy of the regard of Providence, in the 
bosom of equality under just laws, freed from the errors of superstition 
and the scourges of bad government.” 

Robert R, Livingston (1746-1813), speaking to Monroe and Marbois, 
thus estimated this treaty, which ranked next to the Declaration of 
Independence (to draft wMch he was one of the Committee out of five), 
and the adoption of the Constitution, events of which it was the logical 
outcome; but as a matter of diplomacy it was unrivalled, because it 
cost almost nothing. The committee was Livingston, Monroe and Pinck¬ 
ney, but the immediate agent in securing the transfer for $15,000,000 
was Livingston. 

JOHN K. HOSMER ON LIVINGSTON 

“Jefferson never did better than in the selection of Robt. R. Livingston 
to represent America in this crisis (the negotiation in respect to the 
Louisiana Purchase). Of a distinguished hne in which Scotch and Dutch 
were blended, he himself from an early age had shown remarkable powers 
and rendered extraordinary public services. He had been on the com¬ 
mittee of flve for drafting the Declaration of Independence; he had 
presided at the convention at which New York adopted the Federal 
Constitution, bringing about the favorable result by his influence. As 
Chancellor of New York he had administered the oath to Washington at 
his inauguration; and first of men had hailed him as he stood in the 
supreme place, ‘Long hve George Washington, President of the United 
States,’ In the full strength of his powers he was now set to conduct 
a most arduous and embarrassing negotiation, which he carried through in 
a manner to confirm his title to high fame. When he Anally left Europe, 
in 1805, Napoleon assured him of his regard, bestowing upon him one 
of those tabatieres (snuff-boxes) which in that day appeared, now and then, 
in connection with interesting events. This snuff-box, too, like the one 
described by Lucien, was set magnificently with diamonds, and had 
in its lid a miniature of Napoleon himself. American distinctions, too, 
were not wanting, and the Commonwealth of New York could not have 
chosen better than to set a statue of him, as she did at a later time, in 
the hall at Washington, as one of her two typical great men.” 

— Jas. K. Hosmer, in his ^History of the Louisiana Purchase,' 
llS-15. 


JOHN D. LONG (1838-1915), Massachusetts 

THE HERO OF THE CIVIL WAR, THE COMMON SOLDIER 

“And when the drum beat, when the first martyr’s blood sprinkled 
the stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward. 
You remember his ingenious and glowing letters to his mother, written 
as if his pen were ^pped in his very heart. How novel it seemed to him 
the routine of service, the life of camp and march! How eager the wish 
to meet the enemy and strike the first blow for the good cause! What 
pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or 
its strap upon his shoulder! 

“They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby, and grew gaunt and 
haggard with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the ^eater 
horror of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. 
He tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of re¬ 
capture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept 
in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the ghtter of horsemen who 
pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached 
the line; and with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught him and took 
him back to his captivity. 

“He was exchanged at last; and you remember, when he came home 
on a short fiu*lough, how weary and warworn he had grown. But he 
soon returned to the ranks and to the welcome of his comrades. They 
recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the riflepits around Peters¬ 
burg you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one who saw 
him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt the end. 
He had just timned to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There 
was a convulsion of upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned 
their last glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at night¬ 
fall lay with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than 
Adonis, over whom the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the 
village churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and 
his Ian, nearer than comrades, scattered his grave with flowers. Do you 
ask who he was? He was in every regiment and every company. He 
went out from every village, he sleeps in every burying-ground. Recall 
romance, recite the names of heroes, of legend and song, but there is 
none that is his peer.” 

— The above is from an oration delivered in 1882, at Tremont Temple, 
Boston, to veterans of the Civil War. 

John D. Long, of Mass. (1838-19 ), born at Buckfield, Me., educated 
at Harvard, and Harvard Law School; Governor of Mass, and served 
three terms in Congress; Sec. of Navy under McKinley, after whose death 
resumed practice of law in Boston. 


BENJAMIN HARRISON 

“General Harrison was by far the ablest and profoundest lawyer among 
our presidents, none of them equaled him as an orator. His State papers 
were of a very high order. When history sums up the men who have 
held the great place of president of the United States, General Harrison 
Avill be among the foremost.” 

— C. M. Depew, 'Memories of Eighty Years,' 1^0. 



SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH (1765-1832), England 


LAW 

“Law,” said Dr. Johnson, “is the science in which the greatest powers 
of the understanding are applied to the greatest number of facts; and 
no one who is acquainted with the variety and multiphcity of the subjects 
of jurisprudence, and with the prodigious powers of (hscrimination 
employed upon them, can doubt the truth of the observation, * * * 

The law of England has been chiefly formed out of the simple principles 
of natural justice by a long series of judicial decisions. * * * There 

is not, in my opinion, in the whole compass of human affairs so noble a 
spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; 
where we may contemplate the cautions and unwearied exertions of wise 
men through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, ") 
from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible 
rules, extending the dominion of justice and reason, and gradually con¬ 
tracting within the narrowest possible hmits the domain of brutal force 
and arbitrary will.”. 

His defense of Jean Peltier for a libel against Napoleon, Howell’s 
State Trials, Vol. 28, 566, before Lord Ellenborough, in 1803, must 
always rank as a display of intellectual power, unsm-passed in ancient 
or modern times. Peltier was convicted. During the week preceding the 
trial it was believed that the acquittal of Peltier would be considered 
in France as tantamount to a declaration of war against the First Consul. 

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 

“There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his 
reason on the most important concerns of society; where he can boldly 
publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful 
tyrants. The press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free 
Constitution of forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of 
Englishmen, and, I trust I may venture to say, that if it be to fall, it 
will fall only under the ruins of the British empire. It is an awful con¬ 
sideration, gentlemen. Every other monument of European hberty has 
perished. That ancient fabric which has been gradually reared by the 
wisdom and virtue of our fathers still stands. It stands, thanks be to 
God, solid and entire, but it stands alone, and it stands amid ruins.” 

—In behalf of Jean Peltier, a French royalist. 

THE DUTY OF A JURY 

“In the court where we are now met, Cromwell twice sent a satirist 
on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a hbeler; and in this 
court, almost in sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of his 
sovereign, within hearing of the clash of his bayonets which drove out 
Parhament with contumely, two successive jmies rescued the intrepid 
satirist (Lilbiu’ne) from his fangs, and sent out with defeat and disgrace 
the usurper’s attorney-general from what he had the insolence to call 
his court! Even, then, gentlemen, when the law and liberty were trampled 
under the feet of a military banditti; when those gi'eat crimes were per¬ 
petrated on a high place and with a high hand against those who were 
the objects of public veneration, which more than anything else, break 
their spirits and confound their moral sentiments, obliterate the dis¬ 
tinctions between right and wrong in their understanding, and teach 
the multitude to feel no longer any reverence for that justice which they 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


445 


thus see triumphantly dragged at the chariot wheels of a tyrant; even 
then, when this unhappy country, triumphant, indeed, abroad, but 
enslaved at home, had no prospect but that of a long succession of tyrants 
wading through slaughter to a tlirone, even then, I say, when all seemed 
lost, the unconquerable spirit of English liberty survived in the hearts of 
English jurors. That spirit is, I trust in God, not extinct; and, if any 
modern tyrant were, in the drunkenness of his insolence, to hope to over¬ 
awe an Enghsh jury, I trust and I believe that they would tell him: 
‘Our ancestors braved the -bayonets of Cromwell; we bid defiance to yours.’ 
Comempsi Catiline gladios—non pertimes camtuos (I have despised the 
daggers of Catiline, and I shall not fear yours. 

“* * * What could be such a tyrant’s means of overawing a jury? 
As long as their country exists, they are girt round with impenetrable 
armor. Till the destruction of their country, no danger can fall upon them 
for the performance of their duty, and I do trust that there is no English¬ 
man so unworthy of fife as to desire to outlive England. But, if any of 
us are condemned to the cruel punishment of surviving our country—if, 
in the inscrutable counsels of Providence, this favored seat of justice 
and hberty, this noblest of human wisdom and virtue, be destined to 
destruction, which I shall not be charged with national prejudice for saying 
would be the most dangerous wound ever inflicted on civilization; at 
least let us carry with us into our sad exile the consolation that we our¬ 
selves have not violated the rights of hospitahty to exiles, that we have 
not torn from the altar the suppliant who claimed protection as the 
voluntary victim of loyalty and conscience.” 

—In defense of Jean Peltier, who was convicted, largely by the strong 
charge of Lord Ellenborough against the prisoner. 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

“The antagonism between Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase, the secretary 
of the treasury, though rarely breaking out in the open, was nevertheless 
accute. Mr. Seward was one of the most charming of hosts and his 
conversation a liberal education; he was devoted to the president and made 
every possible effort to secure his renomination and election. Mr. Chase 
was doing his best to prevent Mr. Lincoln’s renomination and secure it 
for himself. No president ever had a Cabinet of which the members were 
so independent, had so large individual followings, and were so inharmon¬ 
ious. The president’s sole ambition was to secure the ablest men in the 
country for the departments which he assigned to them without regard 
to their loyalty to himself.' One of Mr. Seward’s secretaries would fre¬ 
quently report to me the acts of disloyalty or personal hostility on the 
part of Mr. Chase with the lament: ‘The old man—meaning Lincoln— 
knows all about it and will not do a thing.’ 

“I had a long and memorable interview with the president. As I 
stepped from the crowd in his reception-room, he said to me: ‘What do 
you want?’ I answered: ‘Nothing, Mr. President. I only came to pay 
my respects, and bid you good-by, as I am leaving Washington.’ ‘It is 
such a luxury,’ he then remarked, ‘to find a man who does not want 
anything. I wish you would wait until I get rid of this crowd.’ He 
threw himself on the lounge and said: ‘I am accused of telhng a great 
many stories. They say that it lowers the dignity of the presidential 
office, but I have found that plain people, take them as you find them, 
are more easily influenced by a broad and humorous illustration than in 
any other way, and what the hypercritical few may think, I don’t care.” 

—Chauncey M. Depew, 'Memories of Eighty Years,^ 56-7. 



JOHN McSWEENEY (1824-1890), Ohio 


Lying Witness: “God made him for a man, so let him pass.” 

Maxim: “There is a maxim in the Latin language, which translated 
into Eng:lish means, ‘It is better that 99 guilfy men be set free than that 
one innocent man be punished.’ Now, that is couched in an old dead 
language; and I did not know what it meant, but I asked one of your 
High School boys, as I came into Court, what it meant, and he said it 
means as I have quoted it above.”— Johji McSweeney, in a criminal trial. 

MASTER OF A JURY 

McSweeney was the most perfect master of a jury, the trial judge, 
and the audience of a court-room, of any lawyer I ever knew. He had 
the Bible and Shakespeare at his tongue’s end, and could use them both 
with great effect. A six-foot-three Irishman, he had just enough of pathos 
and wit combined to melt them to tears, and carry them on rhetorical 
flights, with his airy wit into the upper regions. He lived in Wooster, 
Ohio, all his life, and radiated from there, over the State, and nearly all 
the States, even in the Star Route case with Ingersoll, in the defense of 
Dorsey. His regular fee in a criminal case was $500 per day. It is related 
that while defending a criminal for felony in Akron, Ohio, the court 
at the request of the attorneys on both sides, held a night’s session, when 
McSweeney was to close in his argument to the jury. An opera company 
which was performing in the city had to shut their doors, as the argument 
of the great lawyer was the greater attraction; all went to hear McSweeney 
and the opera-house was empty. 

— The compiler of this work., who knew McSweeney. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A JUROR’S OATH 

“Mr. Adolph Brown, you are one of this jury, and I want you to make 
up your mind that the prisoner at the bar is guilty of the heinous crime 
of murder, and that beyond any reasonable doubt; and his Honor vdll 
tell you what that is. And, sir, if you have such a doubt lingering in 
your mind, after hearing all the witnesses, seeing them and the manner 
in which they told their stories, and then send this poor, unfortunate 
man into eternity, by your verdict, you are a whited sepulchre! Remember 
the oath you took that you would try this man, and an impartial verdict 
render. You! You!! You!!! Not the other eleven men on this panel, 
but you. Never mind what they think. It is what you think. Don’t 
compromise where a man’s life is at stake. Render a verdict in this 
case, so that when you go home, and into your closet to commune with 
your Mak^r, you can be at peace with your God. If you do not, the 
thought will harrow your heart all through yoim days upon earth. Why, 
it is an awful responsibility. Think of it!” 

I have seen many a strong man shake and tremble like a leaf under 
the spell, and the bringing right home to them the awful responsibility 
and position in which they found themselves. 

— The author of this work, who was very familiar icith McSweeney's 
power when a student of the law, in Ohio, in the Scve7ities of the last 
century. 

WENDELL PHILLIPS ON McSWEENEY 

“While at Ottawa, Ohio, I heard McSweeney in a criminal case. It 
was a masterly effort. He laid down such a solid foundation in his open¬ 
ing, defining a jury’s duty in criminal trials, and pressed his claim home 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


447 


so effectively on them, that I felt, if the case liad the usual amount of 
conflicting testimony, he had won it without going further. This pre¬ 
sentation of a jury’s duty was as remarkable for what he did not claim 
as for anything else. He kept so carefully witliin the lines that every 
juryman felt not only what he asked was fair and reasonable, but was 
hardly up to what the cases he cited would allow him to claim. 

“Then came the analysis of the connections, relations and bearing 
of three promissory notes, intricate and exceedingly difficult to disen¬ 
tangle. But it was done so clearly, briefly, and with such daylight distinct¬ 
ness, that the laziest juryman listened to every word, and the dullest 
one among them could not escape understanding and appreciating the 
impregnable logic of this part of Ms defense. This was a marvel of state¬ 
ment. He would make an excellent English minister to unravel a budget. 
Then the pure Saxon, very few dictionary words, and wit enough to relieve 
what was necessarily a somber argument without weakening the solemnity 
of his appeal; and just that amount of pathos, rising naturally and almost 
inevitably from the facts, as would melt a jury without making them feel 
that their feehngs were being used to warp their judgment. It was masterly. 
Of course, it would not be called a great case; but in quality, McSweeney’s 
argument takes rank with some of the great historic efforts.” 

THE CLEVELAND PRESS ON McSWEENEY 

“ ‘John McSweeney was one of the best speakers I ever listened to,’ 
said a well-known attorney to a Press man. ‘I remember the case in 
which he won his fame as an orator in Cleveland. It was the suit of 
Thomas DowUn vs. The Second National Bank, to recover $10,000 
worth of bonds deposited with the bank and which had been stolen by 
a man who was formerly cashier. The ease was tried three times. The 
first time the jury rendered a verdict for $24,000 for plaintiff, the second 
time it disagreed and finally, at the May term, 1872, a verdict of $13,000 
in round numbers was secured. McSweeney’s speech was one of the best 
efforts of his life. He was well-known for his play upon words and in 
his speech said, ‘When this old Captain came thundering at the doors 
of the bank for his bonds, he was given A. Stone.’ (Amasa Stone was at 
the time connected with the bank.) He drew a graphic picture of the 
alleged directors’ meeting, called, as he said, ‘for the purpose of gobbling 
up the bonds of the old Captain.’ ‘When the directors met,’ said Mc¬ 
Sweeney, ‘one of them arose and said. Let us yrey, only they spelled it 
with an ‘E’ at that bank, instead of an ‘A’.’ Clasping his hands and closing 
his eyes, McSweeney offered up the alleged prayer and it brought down the 
house. Judge Stephenson Burke was defending the ease, and McSweeney 
drove many a hot shot at him during the trial. His description of the 
directors’ meeting was funny in the extreme, and he wound up by saying 
that they had got all ready to take the bonds when somebody suggested 
that there might be some legal impediment. One member rose and was 
asked where he was going. ‘Never mind,’ said he, ‘I’ll be back in a 
minute.’ Soon after he came back, swinging his hat and saying, ‘It’s all 
right. I’ve been down to see Judge Burke and he says as long as we are 
within the scope of the bank’s authority we are liable, but as soon as 
we get out of the scope into the scoop, we are not liable.’ McSweeney 
was a hard worker, and I doubt if any lawyer in the country could compare 
with him in the argument of a criminal case’.”— Cleveland Press, Jan., 
1890, upon McSweeney's death. 

THE DETROIT COLLECTOR ON McSWEENEY 

“McSweeney’s manners were persuasive and captivating before he 
opened his mouth. He possessed a bold confidence that took his adver¬ 
sary by storm before a shot was fired; of wonderful resources, looking 


448 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


far ahead. You had to watch him closely ere you were aware he had 
seized his objective point and put it down in ink. He used his own 
witnesses with a wonderful dexterity, terrified with the form of apparent 
rage, put a favorable construction on a damaging theory, and a liar 
never escaped the keenness of his intellectual sword. To those who 
did not know him, he seemed to lack something of geniality and suaviter 
in modo, but in a company of friends, and in his home, his manners 
were tender and gentle. As a conversationalist, he was a fountain 
where the Graces might have loved to pause and sip. He was a master of 
style, free from mannerisms. His language was the purest Saxon. His 
control and the modulation of his voice were in some respects the secret 
of his power. He understood the pitch and quality of tone in every shade 
of thought and emotion. If he desired to be sad or plaintive, the modula¬ 
tion was minor or semi-tonic; if inclined to irony, his voice waived 
upward and downward; if inclined to expressions of awe and sublimity, 
it had a' level movement from note to note, like the repeated sounds 
of a deep toned bell. Sober in pathos, furious in repartee, jolly in humor, 
terrific in invective.”— 'The Collector,' Detroit, Mich., Jan., 1890. 

JOHN VAN BUREN’S TRIBUTE 

In the campaign of 1856, the Democrats held a great mass-meeting 
at Salem, Ohio. John Van Buren, then at the zenith of his renown as a 
pohtical orator, and in request everywhere, was secured for the occasion 
as the orator. When he had finished his great speech, Mr. McSweeney, 
who was present and only thirty-two years of age, was induced to take 
the stand and give them a short address. He had not spoken long when 
Mr. Van Buren turned to some one at his side and asked: “Who is that?” 
“That is John McSweeney, of Wooster,” was the answer. “Why did you 
send to New York for a speaker when you have in Ohio such a speaker 
as McSweeney?” asked Mr. Van Buren, 

PARODY IN THE STAR ROUTE CASE 

In the argument in 1883 of the Star Route ease, in defense of Stephen 
W. Dorsey, in which he was associated with Robert G. Ingersoll, parody¬ 
ing on Poe’s Raven, in describing the interview between Walsh and Brady, 
McSweeney said: 

“Not the least obeisance made he. 

Not a moment stopped or staid he. 

Not even a parting damn to Brady, 

But stalked out the office-door; 

Only this, and nothing more!” 

GREAT READER AND WONDERFUL MEMORY 

He gormandized books, and could with a single reading of a book, or 
once hstening to a lecture, almost reproduce it. He could quote whole 
chapters from the Bible, and would frequently reproduce the tragic 
scenes from Shakespeare to a jury with telling effect. His reading outside 
of the law took a wide range, news, poetry, history, travel, science and 
the arts; theology, biography, the classics, and the Bible, and Shakespeare; 
and his conversation was delightful, instructive, entertaining and spark- 
hng. At his home, of which he was fond, he was exceedingly hospitable, 
and was especially proud of his family. Shame and pretense he detested. 

— Author. 

HIS MOTHER A SISTER OF DANIEL O’CONNELL 

He was of Irish descent, his mother being a sister of Daniel O’Connell* 
The cholera having swept away his parents in his infancy, he was edueatedi 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


449 


an orphan, at St. Xavier, Cincinnati, and Western Reserve colleges. 
He gained great reputation for efficiency in the classics. .Read law with 
John Harris, of Canton, O., and located in Wooster, O., in 1845, and about 
1865 acquired national renown as a criminal lawyer. He died in the town 
in which he located, in 1890, at the age of sixty-six. 


ENGLISH AUTHORS MOST PLEASED BY AMERICAN 
ADMIRERS 

“It is probably true that, in this country, English authors find their 
warmest and most impassioned admirers. It is as true of the mind as 
the eye, that distance lends enchantment to the view. There are no hues 
so soft and delicate as those with which the imagination invests that 
which is unseen or faintly discerned. Remoteness in space has the same 
idealizing effect as remoteness of time. The voice that comes to us from 
the dim past is sacred. We know but we do not feel the interval which 
separates Shakespeare from Scott, Milton from Wordsworth, Hume from 
Hallam, We know them only by those airy creations of the brain which 
speak to us through the printed page. Solitude and silence, too, are the 
nurses of deep and strong feeling. The imaginative element which exalts 
the love of Dante for Beatrice, and of Burns for his ‘Mary in Heaven,’ 
deepens the fervor of admiration with which the pale, enthusiastic 
scholar, in some lonely farmhouse in New England, hangs over a favorite 
author, who, though perhaps a living contemporary, is recognized only 
as an absolute essence of genius, wisdom or truth. The minds of men 
whom we see face to face appear to shine upon us darkly through the 
infirmities of a mortal frame. Their faculties are touched by weariness 
or pain, or some humiliating weariness of unhandsome passion thrusts 
its eclipsing shadow between us and the light of their genius. Not so 
much with those to whom they speak only through the medium of books. 
In these we see the products of those golden hours, when all that was low 
is elevated, when all that was dark is illumined, and all that was earthly 
is transfigured. Books have no touch of personal infirmity—theirs is 
undying bloom, immortal youth, perennial fragrance. Age cannot wrinkle, 
disease cannot blight, death cannot pierce them. The personal image of 
the author is quite as likely to be a hindrance as a help to his book. 
The actor who played with Shakespeare in his own ‘Hamlet’ probably 
did but imperfect justice to this wonderful play, and the next-door 
neighbor of a popular author will be very likely to read his books with a 
carping, censorious spirit, unknown to him who has seen the vision only 
in his mind.” 

—George S. Hillard, at a Banquet to Charles Dickens, by the ^ Young 

Men of Boston,’ Feb. 1, 18^2. 


THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

“Roosevelt was a marvel of many sidedness. Besides being an executive 
as governor of a great State and administrator as civil-service commis¬ 
sioner and police commissioner of New York, he was an author of popular 
books, and a field naturalist of rare acquirements. He was also a wonderful 
athlete. I often had occasion to see him upon urgent matters, and was 
summoned to his gymnasium, where he,was having a boxing match with 
a well-known pugilist, or else launching at his fencing master. The 
athletics would cease, to be resumed as soon as he had in his quick and 
direct way, disposed of what I presented.” 

— C. M. Depeut, ^Memories of Eighty Years’, 169-70. 




WAYNE MACVEAGH (1833-1917), Pennsylvania 


GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES 

“The German Embassy is accused of being the center of offensive 
activity. Every day some new form of illegal action is alleged to emanate 
from it. One day they are charged with forging passports. Another day 
one of their agents is charged with blowing up a bridge connecting the 
United States with Canada. Another day they are said to have furnished 
false affidavits as to the character of the cargo of the Lusitania, and in 
Berlin they have even descended to the lowest depths of ignominy, for 
they have portrayed the President of the United States as bribed by 
British gold, while in truth no more long-suffering Executive, no more 
indulgent and peace-loving President ever filled his great office. In 
pursuit of peace of good relations with Germany, he has, quite unwittingly, 
no doubt, subjected our own country to such indignities as no free and 
high-spirited people ought to have endured. The simple truth, which 
he- has been so unwilling to recognize, is that there exists an impassable 
chasm between a citizen of the United States and a subject of the German 
Emperor, and there is no possible political alchemy whereby the political 
standards of the one can be transmuted into the political standards of 
the other. No matter where a man is born or how he is reared, when he 
comes to manhood he instinctively prefers to be a citizen or a subject. 
Our fathers preferred, and we ourselves and our children all prefer, to 
be free citizens, but we do not for that reason deny to anybody else the 
privilege of preferring to be the obedient subject of a Kaiser and a Mil¬ 
itary Caste. We only ask them in all fairness to themselves and to us 
to make their choice, to be loyal either to the fundamental principles 
of our Government or those of the Government of the Kaiser, and to 
believe that they cannot be half loyal to the one and half loyal to the other. 
They must be wholly American or wholly German, and if they really 
prefer the German system of government, they should return thither 
and enjoy it; but if they propose to continue to live here, then they must 
be loyal to the American system, and there is no possibility for them of 
mistaking what that system is. Thomas Jefferson declared it to the 
whole world when he said the just rights of all governments depend 
upon the consent of the governed, and Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, 
in a few words, stamped it forever upon the history of mankind, in his 
immortal aspiration, that government of the people, by the people and 
for the people should never perish from the earth. Whoever accepts 
without reservations those two principles of government is a loyal Amer¬ 
ican. Whoever pretends to accept them and is at heart disloyal to them 
is unworthy of American citizenship and ought to be deprived of it, for 
it is an impassable chasm which those honestly on one side can never pass 
over to the other.” 

— Wayne MacVeagli, ‘The Impassable Chasm,' in North American 

Review, Jvly, 1915, pp. 33-34-. 

J. S. BLACK'S REPLY TO MACVEAGH 

“My friend from Dauphin (MacVeagh) spoke of legislation under the 
figure of a stream, which he said, ought always to flow Avith crystal 
water. It is true that the Legislature is the fountain from which the 
current of our social and political life must run, or we must bear no life; 
but as it now is, we keep it merely as a cistern for foul toads to knot and 
gender in. He has described the tree of liberty, as his poetic fancy sees 
it, in the good time coming, when every man shall rest under its shade. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


451 


and singing birds shall inhabit its branches and make most agreeable 
music. But what is the condition of that tree now? Weary men do, 
indeed, rest under it, but they rest in their unrest, and the longer they 
remain there the more weary they become. And the birds—it is not the 
woodlark, nor the thrush, nor the nightengale, nor any of the musical 
tribe, that inhabit the branches of our trees. The foulest birds that 
wing the air have made it their roosting-place, and their obscene drop¬ 
pings cover all the plains about them—the kite, with liis beak always 
sharpened for some crude repast; the vulture, ever ready to swoop upon 
his prey; the buzzard, digesting his filthy meal and watching for the 
moment when he can gorge himself again upon the prostrate carcass of 
the Commonwealth. And the raven is hoarse that sits there croaking 
despair to all who approach for any clean or honest purpose.” 

—Remarks in Constitutional Convention which adopted The Penn¬ 
sylvania Constitution of 1873. 

THE ABUSE OF THIEVES IS COMMENDABLE 

“In these days the abuse of thieves is the only decoration in our pubhc 
life worth the winning, or the wearing, and it is the surest possible pass¬ 
port to the good opinion of honest men.” 

—Said during the Star Route 'prosecutions, while Wayne Mac- 
Veagh teas attorney-general of the United States, in 1883. Mac- 
Veagh graduated at Yale; was Minister to Turkey (1870-1); chief 
counsel, 1903, for the Hague Tribunal; Minister to Italy (1893-7); 
Attorney-General, under Garfield, 1881. 


JAS. T. BRADY ON CHAS. GOODYEAR 

“That Goodyear expended thousands upon thousands in prosecuting 
his experiments in India rubber is quite true, but it is just as true that he 
expended little on himself. There is one great fact to demonstrate that 
he sunk his means in experiments, namely, that he died in debt, which 
his assets cannot pay. Now what became of his money? Did he spend 
it in pleasure? Had he any costly vices or habits? On the contrary, 
he was a small, attenuated, sickly man, with a complexion intensely 
sallow; pale, a weak stomach, faltering limbs, and feeble almost as a 
puny child. Aside from love of family and friends he had but one worldly 
idea, that was India rubber. It was the sole object of his study and 
occupation. Money could purchase little or nothing for the gratification 
of such a man.” 

—Ref ore the Committee of the House of Representatives, advocating the 
extension of Goodyear patents. 


LIBEL 

“The fact that a libel is published in a newspaper on the communica¬ 
tion of a correspondent is not admissible in evidence to mitigate damages. 
In an early case in Pennsylvania, the court quaintly said: Tt will not 
be denied that if one designedly bespatters another’s clothes with filth 
as he passes the street, though at the instigation of a third person, he 
would be liable for damages. And shall a printer with his types blacken 
the fairest reputation—the choicest jewel we enjoy—and. go scott-free, 
merely because he has told the world that the paper is inserted at the 
request of another?”— Runkle v. Meyer, 3 Yates, 518. 




JAMES MADISON (1751-1836), Virg'nia 


STATE CANNOT SECEDE 

Could a State once adopt the Constitution and then withdraw from 
the Union if not satisfied? Madison’s reply was prompt and decisive. 
No such a thing could ever be done. A state which had once ratified 
was in the federal bond forever. The Constitution could not pro^dde 
for nor contemplate its own overthrow. There could be no such thing 
as a constitutional right of secession.— The Author. 

—James Madison’s advice to Hamilton, July 26, 1787, when speak¬ 
ing of the ratification of the Constitution. 

Entered Princeton University at 17, graduating at 20—and during 
his college course allowed himself but tlmee hours’ sleep. Says John 
Fiske: “He was the constructive thinker who played the foremost 
part among the men who made the Constitution.” “The wisest of our 
Presidents, except Washington,” said Webster.— The Author. 

A SUPREME COURT NEEDED 

“The National supremacy ought also to be extended, as I conceive 
to the judiciary department. If those who are to expound and apply 
the laws are connected by their interests and their oaths with the parti- 
ular States wholly, and with the Union, the participation of the Union 
in the making of the laws may be possibly rendered unavailing It 
seems at least necessary that the oaths of the judges should include 
a fidelity to the general, as well as local. Constitution; and that an appeal 
should lie to some national tribunal in all cases to which foreigners, or 
inhabitants of other States, may be parties. The admiralty jurisdiction 
seems to fall within the purview of the National Government.” 

—Debates and Correspondence,” Vol. 2, p.714^—written a month 
before the meeting of the Federal Convention—addressed to Geo. 
Washington. 

MADISON—ONE OF FIVE TO WHOM WE OWE THE 
CONSTITUTION OF THE U. S. 

“In constructing the National Government there are five men dis¬ 
tinguished above all others —Washington Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson 
and Marshall; but for Washington, doubtless independence could not 
have been won, and the Constitution, consequently, not adopted; Madison 
was the constructive thinker, foremost among those who made that 
instrument, and by speech and pen secured its ratification; Hamilton 
surpassed Madison, in his advocacy of it and in practical construction, 
and in financial matters, took the lead—but his boldness alarmed many 
people who feared a despotism; others, however, were equally afraid 
of democracy, because of France overturning society and setting up the 
guillotine; here came in Jefferson’s work, and it was in his Presidency that 
loyalty to the Union may be said to have taken root; and under Marshall’s 
coherent judicial decisions, the national powers of the Constitution were 
established, while still protecting State Rights—for a third of a century, 
he as Chief Justice, finished the glorious work.” 

—Adapted from 1 John Fiske’s ‘Historical and Literary Essays,’ 
185-6. 

MADISON AND GALLATIN 

“After long study of the prominent figures in our history, I am more 
than ever convinced that for combination of ability, integrity, knowledge. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


453 


unselfishness, and social fitness, Mr. Gallatin has no equal. He was the 
most fully and perfectly equipped statesman we can show. Other men, 
as I take hold of them, are soft in some spots and rough in others. Gal¬ 
latin never gave way in my hand or seemed unfinished. That he made 
mistakes I can see, but even in his blunders he was respectable. I can¬ 
not say as much for his friends Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, about 
whom I have been for years hard at work. In regard to them I am in¬ 
cessantly forced to devise excuses and apologies, or to admit that no ex¬ 
cuse will avail. I am at times almost sorry that I ever undertook to 
write their history, for they appear like mere grasshoppers kicking and 
gesticulating on the middle of the Mississippi River. There is no pos¬ 
sibility of reconciling their theories with their acts, or their extraordinary 
foreign policy with dignity. They were carried along on a stream which 
floated them, after a fashion, without much regard to themselves.” 

—From letter of Henry Adams to Sam’l J. Tilden, Wash., D. C., 

Jan. 1883; '‘2 Tilden's Letters and Literary Memorials,' 629-30. 


JEFFERSON’S ESTIMATE OF 

“My successor (Madison), represents the purest principles of republican 
patriotism and adds a wisdom and a foresight second to no man on earth. 
* * * He is our ablest statesman. * * * Such a mind as his, fraught with 
information and with matter of reflection, can never know ennui." 

At one time, when Hamilton had made an argument for a strong 
national government, Jefferson urged Madison in a letter to reply to 
him, as he was the only man in the Union who was equal to the task. 

— Author. 


HARD STUDENT AT PRINCETON 

“During Madison’s two years at Princeton, where he graduated in 
1772, he allowed himself but three hours’ sleep, and devoted almost all 
the rest of the day to study.”— Parton’s Jefferson, 593. 


POVERTY OF MADISON 

‘Monroe died bankrupt, and fllled the office of a justice of the peace, 
after his Presidency. Mrs. Madison knew what it was to want bread. 
Before Congress had purchased her husband’s papers, Mrs. Madison was 
in a state of absolute poverty, and sometimes suffered for the necessities 
of life.”— Parton's Jefferson, 74-2. 


RESUME OF HIS LIFE 

“Madison was one of the most eminent, accomplished, and respected 
of American statesmen. In the Va. legislature, 1784, was chiefly instm- 
mental in securing religious liberty; active in securing the Convention 
of 1787, which framed the Constitution; acted with Jay and Hamilton 
in writing the ‘Federalist;’ chief author of the ‘Virginia plan,’ which 
even went some way toward disregarding state rights; suggested the 
compromise under which, whether in apportioning taxation or repre¬ 
sentation, slaves were regarded as population and not chattels, but 
5 were reckoned as 3 persons, which secured the adoption of the Con¬ 
stitution by the slave-holding states. A month’s discussion was neces- 


454 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


sary before the Va. Convention was brought to ratify the Constitution, 
and that only by 89 votes to 79. He was elected to the 1st National Con¬ 
gress; had done as much as any man to secure adoption of the Con¬ 
stitution, but now sought to limit the powers of the government to the 
strict letter; became a leader of the Jeffersonian party, which made him 
Sec. of State, in 1801; and in 1809 was made President, retiring in 1817 
to his Montpelier home, in Va., where he died in 1836, in his 85th year. 

“Modest, reserved, courteous, kindly, and pleasant, Madison was not 
a brilliant man, but a statesman of eminent ability and purity of character.” 

—See Rives' Life of Madison, in 3 vols. (1859-68). 

PATRICK HENRY ON MADISON 

“I can forgive anything else in Mr. Jefferson, except his corrupting 
Mr. Madison.”— 2 Beveridge's John Marshall, 79, note 1. 


THE GOVERNMENT’S DUTY TO WRONGED FOREIGNERS 
DOMICILED IN THE UNITED STATES 

“Some suggestions growing out of this unhappy incident (the lynching 
of Italians at New Orleans in 1891), are worthy the attention of Congress. 
It would, I believe, be entirely competent for Congress to make offences 
against the treaty rights of foreigners domiciled in the United States 
cognizable in the Federal Courts. This, however, has not been done, and 
the Federal officers and courts have no power in such cases to intervene, 
either for the protection of a forei^ citizen or for the punishment of his 
slayers. It seems to me to follow, in this state of the law, that the officers 
of the State charged with pohce and judicial powers in such cases must 
in the consideration of international questions growing out of such 
incidents, be regarded in such sense as Federal agents, as to make this 
Government answerable for their acts in cases where it would be answer- 
able if the United States had used its constitutional power to define and 
punish crimes against treaty rights.” 

—President Benjamin Harrison, in his Message to Congress, Dec. 9. 
1891, relating to-the lynching of Italians at Neiv Orleans, La., in that 
year. 


THREE SAYINGS OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY 

“I summon all honest men, aJl patriotic, all forward-looking men, to 
my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel 
and sustain me.”— From Inaugvral Address 1913. 

“Those twin heresies—free trade and free silver.”— From Speech. 

“Rebellion may delay, but can never defeat the American Flag’s 
blessed mission of liberty and humanity.” 

—At Cliff Haven, N. Y., referring to the Philippines. 


CIVILIZATION 

“The reason why the race moves slowly is because it must move alto¬ 
gether. It is not the knowledge of the great men, the skill of great orators, 
the philosophy of the great sages that makes civilization. There are no 
orators today as persuasive as Cicero, no philosophers or wise men 
gi'eater than Aristotle or Plato. Yet civilization was not of their day, 
but of ours.”— Anon. 





LORD MANSFIELD, william hurray (1705-1793), 

England 

POPULARITY 

“I come now to speak upon what, indeed, I would have gladly avoided, 
had I not been particularly pointed at, for the part I have taken in this 
bill. It has been said by a noble lord on my left hand that I likewise 
am running the race of popularity. If the noble lord means by popularity, 
that applause bestowed by after ages on good and virtuous actions, I 
have long been struggling in that race: to what purpose, all-trying time 
can alone determine. But if the noble lord “means that mushroom 
popularity,^ which is raised without merit, and lost without a crime he 
is much mistaken in his opinion. I defy the noble lord to point out a 
single action in my life in which the popularity of the times ever had the 
smallest influence on my determinations. I thank God I have a more per¬ 
manent and steady rule for my conduct—the dictates of my own breast. 
They who have foregone that pleasing adviser, and ^ven up their'mind to 
be the slave of every popular impulse, I sincerely pity. I pity them still 
more, if their vanity leads them to mistake the shouts of a mob for the 
trumpet of fame. Experience might inform them, that many, who have 
been saluted with the huzzas of a crowd one day, have received their 
execrations the next; and many, who, by the popularity of their times 
have been held up as spotless patriots, have, nevertheless, appeared 
upon the historian’s page, when truth has triumphed over delusion, the 
assassins of Liberty. When then the noble lord can think I am at a 
loss to determine. Besides I do not know that the bill now before your 
lordships will be popular; it depends much upon the caprice of the day. 
It may not be popular to compel people to pay their debts; and in that 
case, the present must be a very popu ar bill. It may not be popular 
neither to take away any of the privileges of parliament: for I very well 
remember, and many of your lordships may remember, that not long ago 
the popular cry was for the extension of privilege; and so far did they 
carry it at that time, that it was said the privilege protected members 
even in criminal actions; nay, such was the power of popular prejudices 
over weak minds, that the very decisions of some of the courts were tinc¬ 
tured with that doctrine. It was undoubtedly an abominable doctrine; 
I thought so then, and I think so still; but nevertheless, it was a popular 
doctrine, and came immediately from those who were called the friends 
of liberty, how deservedly, time will show. True liberty, in my opinion, 
can only exist when justice is equally administered to all; to the king, and 
to the beggar. Where is the justice then, or where is the law that pro¬ 
tects a member of parliament more than any other man, from the punish¬ 
ment due to his crimes? The laws of this country allow of no place, 
nor any employment, to be a sanctuary for crimes; and where I have 
the honor to sit as a judge, neither royal favor, nor popular applause 
shall ever protect the guilty .”—On the Delays of Justice-Reply to Pitt. 

A SIMILE 

“There is nothing so unlike as a simile, and nothing more apt to mis¬ 
lead.” (Spoken of in certain writers likening one estate to another.) 

HOW TO MAKE A GREAT LAWYER 
“The best thing to make a great lawyer is great poverty.” 


456 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


LORD HARDWICKE 

“A really great and wonderful man in our profession was Lord Hard- 
wieke; a wonderful character; became Chief Justice of England, and 
Chancellor, from his own abilities and virtues.”— Said by Mansfield. 


DUNNING’S RETORT TO MANSFIELD 

! “Oh! if that be law, Mr. Dunning, I may burn my law books!” 

/ “Better read them, my Lord,” was the sarcastic and appropriate 
/ rejoinder. 

^ A TOAST 


“Old books and young friends.” (This was a favorite toast of Mans¬ 
field’s.) 

MACAULAY ON MANSFIELD 

“This distinguished person (Murray) far surpassed Pitt in correctness 
of taste, in power of reasoning, in depth and variety of knowledge. 
His parliamentary eloquence never blazed into sudden flashes of dazzling 
brilhancy; but its clear, placid, and mellow splendor was never for an 
instant overclouded. Intellectually he was, we believe, fully equal to 
Pitt; but he was deficient in the moral qualities to which Pitt owed 
most of his success. Murray wanted the energy, the coiu-age, the all- 
grasping and all-risking ambition which make men great in stirring 
times. His heart was a httle cold, his temper cautious, even to timidity, 
his manners decorous even to formality. He never exposed his fortunes 
or his fame to any risk which he could avoid. At one time he might, in 
all probability, have been Prime Minister. But the object of his wishes 
was the judicial bench. The situation of Chief Justice might not be so 
splendid as that of first lord of the treasury; but it was dignified; it was 
quiet; it was secure; and, therefore, it was the favorite situation for 
Murray.” 

— Macaulay, on the Earl of Chatham, 2 Essay, 24-7-8. {Macaulay 
uas called to the Bar, in 1826, and joined the Northern Circuit, 
at Leeds.) 


(For John Quincy Adams’ Criticism of Mansfield, see J. Q. Adams.) 

SLAVERY 

“The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every 
man is free who breathes it.” 

LIBEL 

“The greater the truth, the ^eater the libel.” 

Lord Mansfield: “Certain of his judgments were of such trans- 
cendant power that his hearers were lost in admiration of the strength 
and stretch of the human understanding.”— Mr. Justice Buller. 

JUSTICE 


'Mustitia fiat ruat coelum."' (Let justice prevail though the heavens 
fall.)— A motto of Mansfield's. 

CONSCIENCE 

“Conscience, my Lords, is not controlled by human laws nor amenable 
to human tribunals. Persecution or attempts to force conscience will 
never produce conviction, and can only be calculated to make hypo¬ 
crites or martyrs.” 

—5 Lord Chancellors, {Article '’Pratt'—Lord Camden), 287. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


457 


Harrison v. Evans,—as to whether a dissenter was liable to a fine for 
not serving a corporate office which he was disqualified from serving 
—not having taken the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, according to 
rites of the Church of England. Mansfield reversed the fine of 600 pounds 
by the City Courts of London. The foregoing is part of one of the finest 
speeches to be found in the books. 

MANSFIELD ON MACAULAY 

“If I was as cocksm‘e of one thing in the world as Thomas Babbington 
Macaulay is of everything, I would be the happiest man of mj^ acquaint¬ 
ance.” 

Jurisprudence: “The history of a country cannot be well under¬ 
stood vdthout the study of its jurisprudence, without learning minutely 
what great magistrates actually did in aiming to improve the institutions 
over which they preside.” 

Gibbon’s masterly sketch of the Roman Civil Law is the most inter¬ 
esting part of his great work.”— 3 CampbeWs Life of the C. J., 1291. 

RESUME OF HIS CAREER 

William Murray (afterwards Lord Mansfield) was born in 1705, and 
died in 1793, in his 89th year. Was solicitor-general of England for 12 years, 
(1742-54); attorney-general, 2 years (1754-56); Chief Justice 32 years 
(1756-88). Became the most distinguished advocate in England; per¬ 
secuted Scotch peers, his cousins, for treason against King George; was the 
rival of the elder Pitt (Lord Chatham)—the greatest parliamentary orator 
England ever produced; was raised to be the highest criminal judge of 
the realm; refused the Lord Chancellorship, repeatedly; without office, 
directed the measures of successive cabinets; and what was far more 
glory, framed the commercial code of his country. His income at the 
time of liis death, from his mortgages, was $150,000 a j^ear. Thought 
Aristotle the greatest philosopher and master—not only in reasoning, 
but of politics and hterary criticism, who had yet appeared. He read 
systematically all that had been written upon the subject of oratory 
—made himself familiar with all the ancient orators; Cicero was his 
favorite, said there was not an extant oration of that Roman orator 
which he had not, while at Oxford, translated into English and re¬ 
translated it into Latin. Though busy with his judicial duties, found time 
to keep up his acquaintance with the Greek and Latin classics and the 
new publications;.but two cases were decided by him, during his 32 years 
in the highest common law court in England, were even criticised—all 
the rest were unanimously adopted by liis bretffien associates. 

JUDGE JOSEPH STORY’S TRIBUTE 

“During a period of 37 years the powerful mind of Mansfield was en¬ 
gaged in clearing up and laying out the whole province of commercial 
law. And to his great learning, enlarged views, and sound judgment, 
the commercial law of England at the present day is more indebted 
than to any single mind. The doctrines of ‘Insurance’ were almost 
created by him in this country. Into every department of the Common 
Law he infused the spirit.of equity; engrafted on its Saxon and Norman 
limbs the best scions of continental jurisprudence; expanded its principles 
and liberalized its nature, bursting open and overflowing with equity 
the narrow channels of Feudalism. But he was not called upon to ad¬ 
minister Admiralty or Prize Law, and he has left but few eases in which 
their principles are laid down or illustrated—and even in those few they 
have pressed into the reluctant mould of the criminal law.” 

—1 Story’s 'Life and Letters,’ 22 If. 


458 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


LORD THURLOW ON MANSFIELD 

When Lord Mansfield died, George III., who was reputed to be insane,^ 

at that time remarked: “The d-st rascal in my kingdom dies today.” 

Lord Thurlow, upon hearing this observation of George III., said: “Did 
he say that? Then George III. is sane.” 

—Related by Judge E. H. East, of Nashville, Term., to theyompiler, 
Dec. 15, 1896. 

“ABAFT THE BINNACLE” 

Mansfield was presiding at a trial consequent upon a colhsion of two 
ships at sea, when a common sailor, as a witness said: “At the time I 
was standing abaft the binnacle;” whereupon his Lordship, with a 
desire to master the facts, observed: “You say you were standing ‘abaft 
the binnacle;’ now tell me where is ‘abaft the binnacle?’ ” This was 
too much for the gravity of “the salt,” who immediately before chmbing 
into the witness-box, had taken a copious draught of rum, removed 
his eyes from the Bench, turned upon the crowded court with an ex¬ 
pression of intense amusement, and exclaimed at the top of his voice, 
“He’s a pretty fellow for a Judge! Bless my jolly old eyes! he wants 
me to tell him where ‘abaft the binnacle’ is!” Not less amused than the 
witness, Mansfield rejoined: “Well, my friend, you must fit me for my 
office by telhng me where ‘abaft the binnacle’ is; you’ve already shown me 
the meaning of ‘half-seas-over’.”— Stories about Lawyers, 372-S. 

BANCROFT ON MANSFIELD 

‘Mansfield, to whose authority the House of Lords paid greater atten¬ 
tion than to that of any man living, though he entered public life as a 
Whig, stood ready to serve the cause of power, even without sharing it. 
Cautious even to timidity, his understanding was clear, but his heart 
was cold. The childless man had been unsuccessful in love, and formed 
no friendships. His vast accumulations of knowledge, which a tenacious 
memory stored in its hundred cells, ever came forward at his summons. 
His lucid arrangement assisted to bring conviction; and he would expound 
the intricacies of law, or analyze reasonings and evidence, with an in¬ 
telligent smile on his features that spoke plainly the perfect ease with 
which he did it. Ornament seemed to flow so naturally from his subject 
that, while none could speak with more elegance, it seemed impossible 
for him to speak with less. His countenance was beautiful, inspiring 
reverence and regard; his eye gleamed with light; his voice was acutely 
clear, yet varied and musical. He had been a member of the cabinet 
when the plan of the ‘Stamp Act’ was adopted; his legal opinion lay the 
foundations; and he now vindicated its rightfulness of which he saw the 
denial invoked the reform of the British constitution.’’ 

—3 Bancroft's History of the U. S., 190. 


YOU MAY DEAL; BUT I SHALL LEAD 

Sir Frederick Thesiger, afterwards Lord Chelmsford, being angered in 
the conduct of a case, objected to irregularity of a learned sergeant who 
repeatedly put leading questions in examining his witnesses. “I have a 
right,” maintained the sergeant, doggedly, “to deal with my witnesses 
as I please.” “To that I offer no objection,” retorted Sir Frederick; 
“You may deal as you like; but you shan’t lead" 



JOHN MARSHALL (1755-1835), Virginia 


MADISON 

“If eloquence includes persuasion by convincing, Madison was the 
most eloquent man I ever heard .”—John Marshall. 

Tax: “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” 

“We shall remain free, if we do not deserve to be slaves.” 

“Separated from Europe, we mean not to mingle in her quarrels.” 

THE COURTS 

“The judicial department comes home in its effects to every man’s 
fireside; it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is 
it not to the last degree important that he should be rendered perfectly 
and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him 
but God and his conscience?” 

—In Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829-30, at 75 yrs. of 

age. — 1^ Beveridge's Life of Marshall, It.93. 

A CORRUPT JUDICIARY 

“I have always thought, from my earliest youth till now, that the 
greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an un^ateful 
and a sinning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary.” 

—In Beveridge's Marshall, Jf.61. 

AN IDEAL JUDGE 

“The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer 

straight in the eye for two hours and not hear a d-d word he says!” 

John Marshall to John B. Gibson, when the latter was a young man, and 
asked what his idea of a great Judge was. 

—J Beveridge's Marshall, 83. 

CORN KERNELS AND ARMY COLONELS 

Speaking of some drunken colonels, Marshall designated them as 
follows: 

“The corn was full of kernels and the colonels were full of corn!” 

—J Beveridge's Marshall, 83. 

LEGISLATURE AND U. S. COURTS 

“If the legislature of the several States may, at will, annul the judg¬ 
ments of the U. S., and destroy the rights acquired under these judgments, 
the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery, and the nation is 
deprived of the means of enforcing the laws by the instrumentality of 
its tribunals.” 

—John Marshall, in U. S. v. Peters, 5 Crarich, 135. 

A HERO WORSHIPPER 

“A desire to know intimately those illustrious personages who have 
performed a conspicuous part in the great theatre of the world is, perhaps, 
implanted in every human bosom. We delight to follow them through 
the various critical and perilous situations in wliich they may have been 


460 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


placed, to view them in the extremes of adverse and prosperous fortune, 
to trace their progress through all the difficulties they have surmounted, 
and to contemplate their whole conduct at a time, when the power and 
pomp of office having disappeared, it may be presented to us in the single 
garb of truth.”— John Marshall, in his life of Washington. 

WIRT’S LIFE OF HENRY 

“Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry (first published in 1817) does not do full 
justice to its subject. The popular idea of Mr. Henry gathered from Mr. 
Wirt’s book was that of a great orator. He was that and much more, 
a learned lawyer, a most accurate thinker. If I were called upon to say 
who of all the men I have known had the greatest power to convince, 

I should perhaps say Mr. Madison, while Mr. Henry had without doubt 
the greatest power to persuade. Wirt rehed largely for his materials ^ 
upon Thomas Jefferson—an adverse critic of Patrick Henry.” 

—John Marshall, in 2 Wm. Wirt Henry's Patrick Henry. 

MARSHALL ON JEFFERSON 

“To Mr. Jefferson, whose political character is better known than that 
of Mr. Burr, I have felt almost insuperable objections. His foreign 
prejudices seem to me totally to unfit him for the Chief Magistracy 
of a nation, which cannot indulge those prejudices without sustaining 
deep and permanent injury. In addition to this sohd and immovable 
objection, Mr. Jefferson appears to me to be a man who will embody 
himself with the House of Representatives. By weakening the office of 
President, he will increase his personal power. He will diminish his 
responsibility, sap the fundamental principles of the government and 
become the leader of that party which is about to constitute the majority 
of the legislature. The morals of the author of this letter to Mazzei 
(in which Jefferson calls the Federalists ‘an Anglican, monarchical and 
aristocratical party,) cannot be pure. Your representation of Mr. Burr, 
with whom I am totally unacquainted, shows that from him still greater 
danger than even from Mr. Jefferson may be apprehended. Such a 
man as you describe is more to be feared, and may do more immediate, 
if not greater mischief. Believing that you know him well, and are 
impartial, my preference would certainly be for him, but I can take no 
part in this business. I cannot bring myself to aid Mr. Jefferson. 

“Perhaps respect for myself should in my present situation deter me 
from using my influence (if, indeed, I possessed any), in support of either 
gentleman. Altho’ no consideration could induce me to be the Secretary 
of State while there was a President whose political system I believed 
to be at variance with my own; yet this cannot be so well known to 
others, and it might be suspected that a desire to be well with the suc¬ 
cessful candidate had in some degree governed my conduct.” 

—John Marshall to Hamilton, Jan. 1, 1801. 6 Hamilton's Works, 
501; 2 Beveridge's Life of Marshall, 537-8. 

U. S. SUPREME COURT ABOVE CONGRESS 

“It is a position too plain to be contested that the Constitution controls 
any legislative act repugnant to it; or that the legislature may alter the 
Constitution by an ordinary act. Between these alternatives there is 
no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior, paramount 
law, unchangeable by ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is 
alterable when the legislature shall choose to alter it. If the former 
alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


461 


is not law; if the latter part be true, then written Constitutions are 
absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own 
nature illimitable .”—Chief Justice Marshall—in Marbury v. Madison. 

FRANCIS WALKER GILMER ON MARSHALL 

“Everyone has heard of the gigantic abilities of John Marshall; as a 
most able and profound reasoner he deserves all the praise which has been 
lavished upon him. His mind is not very richly stored vath knowledge, 
but it is so creative, so well organized by nature, or disciplined by early 
education and constant habits of systematic thinking, that embraces 
every subject with the clearness and facility of one prepared by previous 
study to comprehend and explain it.”— 2 Beveridge's Marshall, 178. 

GUSTAVUS SCHMIDT ON MARSHALL 

“Mr. Marshall can hardly be regarded as a learned lawyer. His 
acquaintance with the Roman jurisprudence as well as with the laws 
of foreign countries was not very extensive. He was what is called a 
common law lawyer, in the best and noblest acceptation of that term.” 
—2 Beveridge's Marshall, 178. 

JUDGE STORY’S ANECDOTE ON MARSHALL 

“Mr. Samuel Dexter was once in company with Fisher Ames and Chief 
Justice Marshall. The latter commenced a conversation, or rather an 
opinion (for he was almost solus in the dialogue) which lasted some three 
hours. On breaking up, the two former commenced, on their way home¬ 
ward, praising the depth and learning of their noble host. Said Ames, 
after a short talk, ‘To confess the truth, Dexter, I have not understood 
a word of hds argument for half an hour.’ ‘And I,’ good humoredly re¬ 
joined Dexter, ‘have been out of my depth for an hour and a half.’ ” 
—2 Story's Life and Letters, 50^. 

JUDGE JEREMIAH SMITH ON HIS POWER AS A DEBATER 

“Judge Smith used to give a remarkable instance of Judge Marshall’s 
ability as a debater in Congress. There had arisen a discussion on some 
intricate and perplexing subject in which several prominent members 
of the House, and among them Mr. Gallatin, had taken part. After 
they had spoken, Mr. Marshall rose and in a few words laid the whole 
matter open with such perfect distinctness that Mr. Gallatin, who had just 
spoken on the opposite side, exclaimed, ‘Mr. Speaker, we are all wrong; 
the gentleman from Virginia is right,’ and the whole House was satisfied. 
It is said that Judge Marshall never in his life took up more than three 
quarters of an hour in a single speech.” 

— Morrison's Life of Jeremiah Smith, p. 138. 

MARSHALL MADE HISTORY 

“Marshall, in a political way, made history, as by his decisions through 
the Supreme Court he developed the Constitution by interpretation. 
When appointed Chief Justice, the Supreme Com-t had neither the respect 
of the bar nor the people; had so utterly failed that John Jay, the first 
Chief Justice, resigned. Any lawyer who has carefully read Marshall’s 
most important decisions cannot consider them great documents, but 
must regard them as great State papers. They are essentially the prod¬ 
ucts of a mind of a great constructive statesman. Marshall laid the 
foundation of our jurisprudence when he handed down the decision that 
no law passed by Congress or State Legislature should be considered 


462 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


consitutional, if passed on unfavorably by a majority of the members of 
the United States Supreme Bench, as in Marbury v. Madison, Fletcher 
V. Peck, McCulloch v. Maryland, etc. Constructive treason must 
necessarily be the overt act itself, as decided in the trial of Aaron Burr. 
That decision has held good to this day.” 

—Albert J. Beveridge, in speech on ^Marshall,' Kansas City, 
Mo., Bar Ass^n. Mar. 12, 1921. 

WHY MADE CHIEF JUSTICE 

“Marshall was really made Cliief Justice by John Adams in payment 
of a political debt, and because of his logical, masterly argument of a 
law question while a member of Congress. Thomas Nash alias ‘Jonathan 
Robbins,’ an Irish mate of the boatswain of the British frigate ‘Hermione,’ 
had mutinied and with others killed the principal officers and carried the 
boat into a Spam'sh port, and was in consequence surrendered to the 
British authorities by President Adams, under the Jay Treaty, and was 
apprehended in Charleston, S. C., in 1799, and his extradition asked by 
British authorities. Adams referred the matter to Judge Bee, the U. S. 
Judge at Charleston, and the judge acting as a commissioner and carry¬ 
ing out the suggestion of the President, turned him over to Great Britain, 
where he was tried by court-martial, ^convicted and hanged. The affair 
caused great excitement. Nash had claimed American citizenship. The Re- 
pubUcans (the Jeffersonian party) took the ground that he had the right 
to a judicial trial, as provided by the Constitution; that the President’s 
action should be condemned, etc. Resolutions were introduced in the 
House to this effect. It was in opposition to these that Marshall addressed 
Congress, March 4, 1799. He maintained: 

“1st. That the case was within the Treaty; and 

“2nd. That the case was for the Executive, and not judicial decision. 
It was a great speech; one of the best in our political annals, and it is 
equal to any of his great judicial decisions,—analytical, clear, concise, 
logical, convincing. After the argument the President’s position was 
sustained by a large majority, and Marshall’s great reasoning powers 
recognized.”— William Draper Leivis—-2 Gt. Am. Lawyers, S7k-5. 

MARSHALL AND STORY’S PLEDGE 

“While Judge Marshall and Judge Story were boarding together in 
Washington, during their term in the Supreme Court they came to the 
conclusion that Madeira wine was apt to be more of a habit than a 
necessity, so concluded not to take it, except when it was raining; then 
excused on the ground that it would prevent or cure a cold. One da3% 
when Washington was laboring under a long, dry spell, Marshall said: 

“ ‘Oh, Story, won’t you please go to the window and see if it is raining?’ 

“Story did so, and returned with: ‘No rain in sight—not a cloud.’ 

“ ‘Umph!’ said the Chief Justice, ‘that’s in Washington. Well, our 
jurisdiction extends over a vast territory. It surely is raining somewhere 
in it. Bring out the jug!’ ” 

WHY A GREAT JUDGE 

“If we read Marshall’s opinions in the four great cases interpreting the 
Constitution—Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons 
V. Ogden, and Cohen v. Virginia, we will see that the great issue involved 
was interpreted according to its evident meaning—the important part 
of the same decided; while we may have some doubt in regard to the 
minor matters treated, we will not have as to the correctness of liis con¬ 
clusions on questions of first importance. Thus in Marbury v. Madison, 
we may doubt whether the appointment to a Federal office is complete 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


463 


until the appointee’s commission is delivered to him, but not of the duty 
of the judiciary to disregard constitutional legislation; in McCulloch 
V. Maryland, we may question the correctness of the assertion that 
‘the power to tax is the power to destroy,’ but not the power of the 
Federal Government to create a corporation as a means of executing one 
of its enumerated powers; in Gibbons v. Ogden, we may think in spite of 
Marshall’s opinion to the contrary, that the legislation of Congress and 
of the State of New York were not in conflict, but ^vill not dispute the 
correctness of the definition of the scope of the Federal power over 
cominerce; while in Cohen v. Virginia, as the Court confines itself to 
the single question of jurisdiction, we will accept Marshall’s argument 
in all its parts as sound. This ability to take a legal question on which 
a large number of persons have preconceived opinions, the product of 
their pohtical prejudices, analyze it in its parts in such a way that the 
conclusion reached is admitted by the great majoritj'' of each successive 
generation of students to be inevitable, is the best test of Marshall’s 
greatness as a lawyer.” 

—2 William Draper Leivis — ‘Gt. Am. Laioyers,^ Vol. 2, 37Ii.-5. 

PICTURE OF MARSHALL AS LAWYER 

“On a pleasant summer morning, a tall, ungainly man in early middle 
life, sauntered along a Richmond street. His long legs were encased in 
knee-breeches, stockings, and shoes of the period; and about his gaunt, 
bony frame hung a roundabout or short hnen jacket. Plainly, he had 
paid little attention to his attire; bareheaded, his unkempt hair was 
tied behind in a queue; his hat under his arm, full of cherries which he 
was eating as he sauntered idly along. He stopped before The Eagle 
hotel, greeted the landlord, cracked a joke, and passed on. At the inn 
was an old gentleman from the country, who had come to Richmond 
where a law-suit to which he was a party was to be tried. He asked 
who was the best lawyer in Richmond, ‘The man who has just passed, 
John Marshall,’ replied the inn-keeper. The country man, diverted by 
the lawyer’s appearance, did not fill the old man’s idea of a practitioner 
before the Courts. He wanted for his $100—all he had—a lawyer who 
looked like a lawyer. He went to the Court-Room, to look for himself, 
and was told by the clerk to retain Marshall, who then ambled into Court. 
Soon a venerable person, solemn of face, vdth black coat and powdered 
wig, entered. At once the planter retained him. The chent remained 
in Court, it appears, to listen to the lawyers in other cases ahead of his. 
Thus he heard the pompous advocate whom he had chosen; and then in 
astonishment hstened to Marshall. The attorney of impressive appearance 
turned out to be so inferior to Marshall, that he went to the latter, frankly 
told him his circumstances, and apologized, explaining that he had 
$5 left, and asked Marshall whether he would conduct Ms case for that 
amount. With kindly jest about the power of a black coat and a 
powdered wig, Marshall good-naturedly accepted.” 

—2 Beveridge's Life of Marshall, 166-7; ^Southern Literary Mes¬ 
senger,' No. 2, 181-91; See also 8 Jefferson's Works {Ford's ed.), 

197-8—as to his ‘lax, lounging manners.' 


NATIONAL AND STATE RIGHTS 

“If the legislature of the several states may, at will, annul the judg¬ 
ments of the courts of the U. S., and destroy the rights acquired under 
these judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery, 
and the Nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the 
instrumentahty of its own tribunals.” 

— Marshall in the United States v. Peters, 5 Cranch, 135. 


464 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


GIBBONS V. OGDEN, AND OTHERS 

“Never in Congress or Court had that uprising man (Dan’l Webster) 
prepared so carefully. Of all his legal arguments, that in the steamboat 
case is incontestably supreme. And as far as the assistance of associate 
counsel was concerned, Webster’s address, unlike that in the Dartmouth 
case, was all his own. It is true that every point he made had been 
repeated many times in the Congressional debates over internal improve¬ 
ments, or before the N. Y. courts in the steamboat litigation; but these 
facts do not detract from the credit that is rightfully his, for his tre¬ 
mendous arguments in Gibbons v. Ogden. On Mar. 2, 1824, Marshall 
delivered the opinion, which has done more to knit the American people 
into an invisible nation than any one force in our history, excepting only 
War. 

“In Marbury v. Madison he established that fundamental principle 
of liberty that a permanent written Constitution controls a temporary 
Congress; in Fletcher v. Peck, in Sturgis v. Crowinshield, and in the 
Dartmouth case he asserted the sanctity of good faith; in McCulloch v. 
Maryland and Cohens v. Virginia he made the government of the 
American people a living thing; but in Gibbons v. Ogden he welded that 
people into a unit by the force of their mutual interests.” 

—4 Beveridge s Marshall, Jt25-30. 


GREAT BRITAIN’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE 
UNITED STATES 

“Gentlemen, there is today in my country, as in yours, a pride in the 
United States. We cannot forget that if you won your independence, if 
you achieved your liberties, if you laid the foundations of your con¬ 
stitution, if you prepared for such a nation as exists today, you were at 
that time colonists of Great Britain. The men who laid the foundation 
stones for the United States, in which you today glory, were those who 
had gone out from amongst us, who had in the country of my birth 
imbibed for the most part their traditions of liberty and their desire and 
determination to achieve it; and, therefore, vdth no misgiving, with noth¬ 
ing but a feeling of pride, we may rejoice in your success and in your 
progress. We long ago admitted the follies and the wrong-doings of those 
times, as freely as you could insist upon them yourselves. I am not 
going to dwell upon that aspect of the case tonight, because I am quite 
aware that sometimes the ready admission of wrong-doing is rather 
irritating than soothing. I remember once hearing a learned counsel, 
who was conducting the trial of a case before a judge of great ability 
but of not of the best of tempers, put a question of a character such as to 
shock anyone accustomed to be guided by the rigid rules of evidence. 
Strictly in confidence, I don’t think he had the least idea that it was a 
wrong question, but the learned judge interposed and said: ‘That was 
an improper question, Mr. So and So.’ ‘Yes, my Lord, it was very im¬ 
proper.’ ‘Yes,’ said the judge, ‘you ought not to have put the question— 
a most improper question.’ ‘Yes, Sir, I ought not to have put it, a more 
improper question never was.’ And the more the judge reproached 
him the more submissive he became, until he drove the judge nearly 
mad.” 

—Lord Farrer Herschell of England, 'Great Britain and the United 
States,’ at N. Y. City, Nov. 15, 1898. 

Lord Herschell was President of the Joint High Commission to Arbitrate 
the dispute betw'een Canada and the U. S. relative to the Bering Sea 
Seal Fisheries.— Author. 



THOS. F. MARSHALL (1801-1864), Kentucky 


DEFENSE OF HAMILTON 

“The interpretation and defense of the constitution under which we 
live, as embodied in the Federalist, were mainly the production of his 
(Hamilton’s) mind, and still form the text-book for American statesmen, 
lawyers, and judges. The measures recommended and the principles 
maintained by him in relation to the foreign and domestic policy of the 
government he had so signally aided to establish—the assumption and 
funding of the revolutionary debts of the States; the full and faithful 
payment of the public securities; the administration of the national 
finances, and the supply of a national currency and commercial medium 
for the people, combining the solid credit of the metals, with the lightness, 
facility of transmission, and cheapness of paper, through the agency 
of a Bank of the U. S.; a strict neutrality, and the encouragement of a 
navy, with a view to its maintenance and the protection of our commerce; 
the fostering care of American manufactures; and, above all, the indissol¬ 
uble union of these States under a common government, having complete, 
national, and paramount authority over all, touching those things which 
are common to all—these are among the opinions he has left recorded 
in his immortal works; and there is abundant evidence that they were 
formed in the school and ratified by the judgment of that slaveholder 
(Washington) whose sacred dust now reposes within a few miles from this 
spot, in the soil of his native Virginia, and on the banks of his own once 
loved Potomac. Against the hated head of this great statesman and 
illustrious man were hurled the whole thunders of a victorious and 
triumphant party; nor did they cease till the hand of one, now branded 
in his country’s history as a traitor, in an evil hour had laid him low. 
Whatever may have been his errors, it would be hard to convince me that 
one who had entered the family of George Washington at the age of 
nineteen—who had served with him for seven years, through all the soul- 
trying scenes of the Revolution—who enjoyed his entire confidence then, 
and continued so to enjoy it, that afterward, when the leader of the 
Revolution became the civil head of the repubhc he had founded, this 
same traitor was called by him to preside over that department, the most 
embarrassed, the most difficult, the most responsible; and his genius was 
invoked and his judgment trusted to devise the means of establishing 
credit, creating revenue, and reforming the most debased currency 
ever employed in the transactions of mankind; and well did the first 
Secretary of the Treasury vindicate the opinion of his old leader had 
formed of him. And, sir, when George Washington, after his retire¬ 
ment from civil office, was again, and I believe in the last year of his life, 
called on by his country to head her armies in a war then expected with 
France, he stipulated, as the condition of his acceptance, the right to 
name his officers; and he appointed the same traitor-federalist, Alexander 
Hamilton, his second in command—I repeat it; it would be most difficult 
to convince me, with all my confidence in the sagacity, judgment, acute 
discrimination of character, and untarnished honor of George Washington, 
that there was treason in the heart of one whom he reared, loved, and 
trusted throughout his glorious life. If admiration of this man’s genius, 
sorrow for his faults, and pity and regret for his untimely fate, be federal¬ 
ism—I stand convicted.’’— Thomas F. Marshall, of Ky. {1801). 

From debate in H. of R. on the Resolutions to censure John Quincy 
Adams for presenting a petition praying for the dissolution of the Union, 
in 1842. Mr. Marshall was a nephew of C. J. John Marshall, being the 
son of Dr. Louis Marshall, the youngest brother of John Marshall. 


466 


GREAT SAYINGH BY GREAT LAWYERS 


WEBSTER’S OPINION OF GIBBONS V. OGDEN 

“What do you regard as your greatest speech?” asked Harvey of 
Webster; the latter replied as follows: 

“My forensic efforts have been those which have pleased me most. 
The two arguments that have given me the most satisfaction were the 
arguments in ‘the steamboat case’ and the Dartmouth College argument. 
The steamboat case, you remember, was a question of the constitutionalitj^ 
of the right of New York State to give a monopoly to Fulton and his 
heirs forever, of the privilege of plying the waters of the Hudson with 
his steamboats. The value of such a right was not then and could not 
have been, from the nature of the case, fully understood. But it seemed 
to me to be against the very essence of State rights, and a virtual dissolu¬ 
tion of the union in a commercial sense. If New York had a right to 
lay tolls upon her rivers for everybody that should pass, then all the other 
great international rivers and lakes would have the same right, and we 
could not be one as a commercial people. The people of New York felt 
that their rights were at stake in the contest; and their great lawyers—and 
they had many of them—were engaged on that side; the Livingstons and 
Clintons and others of like caliber. Mr. Wirt and myself were employed 
against the monopoly. When the case came to be argued before the 
Supreme Court at Washington, Chief Justice Marshall presiding, Mr. 
Wirt and myself met for consultation. Mr. Wirt asked me upon what 
grounds I based my case, upon what clause of the Constitution. He had 
a right to ask, as he was my senior in years and professional fame. My 
reply was, that the clause of the Constitution which ceded the general 
government the right to regulate commerce was that upon which I based 
my defence. Mr. Wirt’s reply to that was, that he did not see, in that 
line of argument, any ground for our case to rest upon. I said: ‘Very 
well; what is yours?’ So he told me. I do not recollect what it was, but 
it was a totally different clause in which he found the ground of his 
argument. I said to him: ‘Mr. Wirt, I will be frank with you as you have 
been with me, and say that I do not see the slightest ground to rest our 
ease upon in your view of it.’ ‘Very well,’ replied Mr. Wirt, ‘let us each 
argue it in our own way, and we will find out, which, if either, is right?’ 
* * * The result of the case was this: the opinion of the Court, as 

rendered by the Chief Justice, was little else than a recital of my argu¬ 
ment. The Chief Justice told me that he had little to do but to repeat 
that argument, as that covered the whole ground.” 

—^Reminiscences of Daniel Webster/ by Peter Harvey, IJ^O, 


A NON-SUIT 

It is said in the March on Arbitrements, 215, that- a non-suit “is but 
like the blowing-out of a candle, which a man, at his own pleasure, 
lights again.” 


A MAN’S HOUSE IS HIS CASTLE 

“My client,” said an Irish advocate, pleading before Lord Norbury in 
an action for trespass, “is a poor man. He lives in a hovel, and his miser¬ 
able dwelling is in a forlorn and dilapidated state; but, thank God! 
the laborer’s cottage, however ruinous its plight, is his sanctuary and 
his castle. Yes, the winds may enter it, and the rain may enter it; but 
the King cannot enter it.” “What! not the reigning king?” inquired his 
lordship. 




LUTHER MARTIN (1748-1826), Maryland 


ARGUMENT FOR SUBPOENA DUCES TECUM FOR PRESIDENT 
THOS. JEFFERSON 

“All that we want are the copies of some papers and the original of 
another. This is a peculiar case, sir. The President has undertaken to 
prejudice my client by declaring that ‘of his guilt there can be no doubt.’ 
He has assumed the knowledge of the Supreme Being himself, and pre¬ 
tended to search the heart of my highly respected friend. He has pro¬ 
claimed him a traitor in the face of that country which has rewarded him. 
He has let slip the dogs of war, the hell-hounds of persecution, to hunt 
down my friend. And would this President of the United States, who has 
raised all this absurd clamor, pretend to keep back the papers which are 
wanted for this trial, where life itself is at stake? It is a sacred principle, 
that in all such cases, the accused has the right to all evidence which is 
necessary for his defense.” 

(This argument was made to Chief Justice Marshall, sitting in Rich¬ 
mond, Va., in the trial of Aaron Burr, the Vice-President of the U. S., 
for treason, and as a result of the argument, Marshall held that there 
were no prerogatives wliich absolved him (Jefferson) from the obli¬ 
gations of citizenship and decided that the subpoena might issue. Jeffer¬ 
son, lashed with rage by Martin’s criticism and Marshall’s decision, wrote 
to his prosecutor. Geo. Hay: “The leading feature of our Constitution is 
the Independence of the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary of each 
other; and none are more jealous of this than the Judiciary, But would 
the Executive be independent of the Judiciary if he were subject to the 
commands of the latter, and to imprisonment for disobedience; if the 
smaller courts could bandy him from pillar to post, keep him constantly 
trudging from north to south and east to west, and withdraw him entirely 
from his duties?” Jefferson disobeyed the subpoena.— Author. 

PERORATION IN BURR TRIAL 

“When the sun mildy shines upon us, when the gentle zyphyrs play, 
we can easily proceed forward in the straight path of duty; but when 
black clouds enshroud the sky with darkness, when the tempest rages, 
the winds howl, and the waves break over us—when the thunders awfully 
roar over our heads and the lightnings of heaven are called into action— 
it is then that all the energies of the human soul are called into action, 
it is then that the truly brave man stands firm at his post. It is then 
that, by an unshaken performance of his duty, man approaches the nearest 
possible to the Divinity. Nor is there any object in the creation on which 
the Supreme Being can look down with more delight and approbation 
than on a human being in such a situation and thus acting. May that 
God who now looks upon us, who has in His infinite wisdom called you 
into existence and placed you in that seat to dispense justice to your 
fellow-citizens to preserve and protect innocence against persecution— 
may that God so illuminate your understandings that you may know 
what is right; and may serve your souls^with firmness and fortitude to 
act according to that knowledge.” 

— In trial of Aaron Burr, for treason, in behalf of Burr. 

Taney, when 73, placed Martin at the head of the profession in Mary¬ 
land, saying: “With all his defects, he was a profound lawyer. He never 
missed the strong points of his case; and altho’ much might generally 


468 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


have been better omitted, everybody who listened to him would agree 
that nothing could be added. * * * He had an iron memory, and forgot 
nothing he read; and he had read a great deal on every branch of the law.” 

REVERDY JOHNSON ON HIS INTEMPERANCE 

“When a young lawyer, Johnson was associated with Martin in a case. 
They drove from Baltimore to Annapolis to try the cause. Stopping 
over night at the ‘Half-way House,’ Martin got very tipsy as usual. 
They put up at the hotel, and Johnson had been sleeping some hours when 
awakened by Martin’s entering the room. Though Martin was tipsy he 
lighted a candle, threw himself on the bed, took a volume from his 
pocket and began to read. Much surprised, Johnson inquired as to what 
so interested him. ‘Young man,’ replied Martin, T have of late always 
made it a rule to read a few pages from the book of Common Prayer 
before going to sleep.’ ”— Gt. Am. Lawyers,' UO. 

TANEY’S EXPERIENCE WITH MARTIN 

“On one occasion Martin was associated with Taney, afterwards 
Chief Justice of the U. S., in an important ejectment case at Hagerstown, 
Maryland. They drove from Frederick, twenty-six miles away, in five 
relays. At every stop Martin took whisky, when he could get it, ale when 
he could not, and buttermilk when he could get neither. Taney, then a 
young man, called at Martin’s room at II o’clock at night, to talk the 
case over, found him with his hat, one boot and all his clothes on, lying 
across the bed asleep from his various potations. The next morning 
found his hotel-door locked, and Taney was obliged to go to the Court- 
House alone. He knew very little about the case, told the Court so, and 
tried to get a continuance, but the Judge insisted the case must be tried, 
and, as luck woul have it, just as the case was called, in walked Mr. Martin. 
Says Taney, ‘In none of his forensic efforts did he exceed his skill in the 
management of this case; and from the trial I, comparatively a young man, 
got a new insight into ejectment causes’.” 

—Roger B. Taney's Memoirs, by Tyler, 122-3. 

FOND OF MUSIC, SERENADE 

“Martin was very fond of music, but could not distinguish one tune 
from another. After his defense of Aaron Burr for treason he was very 
unpopular in Baltimore. A crowd surrounded his house with a band 
of music playing the ‘Rogue’s March.’ The old gentleman took it as a 
compliment, walked to the front and thanked them politely for their 
music. Not expecting such a reception, the mob stared and moved on, 
and his family, much terrified, gave him a hint to slip away from the door.” 

— Bigelow's ^Bench and Bar,' 2 9. 

ASHLEY M. GOULD’S TRIBUTE 

“Martin was no orator, as were Henry, Wirt and Pinkney; he was not 
capable of the constructive statecraft of Hamilton and Madison; he did 
not possess the power of clear analysis and the judicial temperament of 
Marshall; but as a lawyer, and a lawyer alone, he was an acknowledged 
leader of the American bar for two generations. For thirty years he was 
attorney-general of his State; at forty-three years of age, he was the most 
influential representative in the Constitutional Convention of 1787; 
he was leading counsel in two great cases of our early history, the impeach¬ 
ment of Samuel Chase, and the trial of Aaron Burr for treason, and on 
the conclusion he had the honor of being burned in effigy, in the city of 
Baltimore, by the side of John Marshall.” 

—^Great American Laivyers,' vol. 2, 3-^. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


469 


BLENNERHASSET’S DESCRIPTION 

“As we were chatting, after dinner, in staggered the whole rear-guard 
of Burr’s forensic ariny, I mean, the celebrated Luther Martin, who 
yesterday concluded his fourteen-hour speech. His visit was to Major 
Smith, saying there was no need of an introduction. I was too much 
interested in the little I had seen, and the great things I had heard, 
of this man’s powers and passions not to improve the present opportunity 
to survey him in every light the length of his visit would permit. I 
accordingly recommended our brandy as superior, placing a pint tumbler 
before him. No ceremonies retarded the libation; no inquiries solicited 
him upon any subject, till apprehensions of his withdrawing suggested 
some topic to quiet him on Ms seat. Were I now to mention only the 
subjects of law, politics, news, etc., on wMch he descanted, I should 
not be believed, when I said Ms visit did not exceed tMrty-five minutes. 
Imagine a man capable in that space of time to deliver some account of 
the entire week’s proceedings in the trial, with extracts from memory 
of several speeches on both sides, including long ones from Ms own; 
to recite half columns verbatim of a series of papers, of wMch he said he 
is the author, to caricature Jefferson; to give a history of Ms acquaintance 
with Burr; expatiate on his virtues and sufferings, maintain Ms credit, 
embellish Ms fame, and intersperse the whole with sententious reproba¬ 
tions and praises of several other characters; some estimate, with prepara¬ 
tions, may be formed of tMs man’s powders, wMch are yet shackled by a 
preternatural secretion or excretion of saliva which embarrasses his 
delivery. In tMs, his manner is rude, and Ms language ungrammatical, 
wMch is cruelly aggravated upon Ms hearers by the verbosity and 
repetition of Ms style. With the warmest passions, that hurry Mm like 
a torrent over those characters or topics that lie most in the way of their 
course, he has, by practice, acquired the faculty of curbing his feelings, 
wMch he never suffers to charge the enemy till broken by the superior 
number of Ms arguments and authorities, by wMch he always outflanks 
him when he lets loose the reserve upon the center, with redoubled im¬ 
petuosity. Yet, fancy has been denied to his mind or grace to Ms person 
or habits. These are gross and incapable of restraint, even upon the most 
solemn public occasions. TMs is, at all times, awkward and disgusting. 
Hence, Ms invectives are rather coarse than pointed; his eulogies more 
fulsome than pathetic. In short, every trait of portrait may be given 
in one word, he is Hhe Thersites of the law.' "—2 Parton's Burr — Blen- 
nerhasset's Journal), 152-3. 

THANKED PARENTS FOR HIS EDUCATION 

“My education is a patrimony, for wMch my heart beats toward 
them a more grateful remembrance than had they bestowed upon me 
the gold of Peru or the gems of Colconda.” 

LAWYERS IN MARYLAND PAID $5 EACH 

In 1810 he was stricken with paralysis, and every lawyer in the State 
was compelled by legislative act to pay a yearly license fee of $5.00 for 
his support. He died in 1826. 


LORD ELDON ON LENDING BOOKS 

Lord Eldon lent two large volumes of precedents to a friend, and could 
not recollect to whom. In allusion to such borrowers, he observed, that, 
“though backward in accounting, they seemed to be practiced in book¬ 
ie ceding." 



JEREMIAH MASON (1768-1848), New Hampshire 

“He (Joseph Dennie) was the most aerial, refined, and highly sublimated 
spirit it has ever been my hap to meet with.”— Jeremiah Mason, in 
speaking of a young lawyer of Walp)ole, N. H. 

This is probably plagiarized from Lawrence Stern’s description of 
Parson Yorick in “Tristram Shandy,” where the writer says; “He 
(the .parson) was on the contrary as mercurial and sublimated a com¬ 
position, as heteroclite (an irregularly declined noun) a creature in all 
liis declensions; with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur (gaiety 
of heart) about him, as the Idndliest climate could have engendered and 
put together”— The Author. 

RELIGION ESSENTIAL TO FEMALE CHARACTER 
“A man without religion is never to be much relied on. But an impious 
woman is a dangerous monster, always to be shunned and avoided. 
Infidelity and irrehgion are absolutely inconsistent with the delicacy 
of the female character.”— From letter to his daughter. 

MARSHALL AND WEBSTER’S ESTIMATE OF MASON 
Chief Justice Marshall considered Mr. Mason the greatest master of 
the common law in the country, and this was the unanimous opinion 
among the lawyers. Webster being asked who was the greatest lawyer 
in the U. S., replied: “I should say, of course, John Marshall; but if 
you should take me by the throat, and run me back into a corner and 
demand ‘Now, Webster, upon honor, who is the greatest lawyer?’ I 
should have to say ‘Jeremiah Mason.’ ” 

PARENTAL AFFECTION 

“Parental affection is the most uniform as well as the strongest of any 
that our nature is capable of. I have never known any grief to equal 
that of parents from the loss of children. The death of an interesting 
child in the early blossom of fife blasts all flattering hopes, and implants 
a woe that seems remediless. The chief consolation must come from 
hopes which rehgion furnishes. Philosophy and religion, with the aid 
of time, may assuage the suffering. In truth, wnthout these hopes, life, 
checkered and clouded as it is by the constant occurrences of such inter¬ 
esting events, would not be worth possessing. And, this I think constitutes 
one of the most solid foundations of those hopes. It seems inconsistent 
with the wisdom and benevolence of God, that beings so intelligent as 
our race should have been created for the sole end of what we do and 
suffer in this world.”— Jeremiah Mason, letter to Judge Story, on the death 
of the latter's daughter. May 23, 1831. 

MARSHALL SECOND TO WASHINGTON 
“If John Marshall had not been Chief Justice of the United States, 
the Union would have fallen to pieces before the general government 
had got well under way. Marshall has controlled the Virginia pohticians 
by the irresistible power of his logic. He carried so many well informed 
and well intentioned men with him that the mischievous school of 
Jefferson pohticians could not control Virginia against Marshall. Jeffer¬ 
son was a man of many virtues, but he was a philosopher, not a states¬ 
man. He and Madison did not quite agree. Madison’s mind felt the 
force of Marshall’s reasoning, and never quite adopted the Virginia 
State’s rights theories. John Marshall has saved the Union, if it is saved.” 
—Jeremiah Mason, said to W. H. V. Hackett, a Portsmouth, N. H., 
lawyer, soon after Calhoun's nullification doctrines began to attract 
attention. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


471 


AMBITION 

“I believe I never rated very highly the pursuits of ambition. Among 
those who have run this race most successfully I see few happy or satis¬ 
fied. Oirr country affords but slight inducements to engage in it.” 
—Jeremiah Mason, letter to his wife, ISllf,. 

WASHINGTON 

“I have never doubted that Washington was by far the best and great¬ 
est man that I have ever seen; as a public man he approached as near 
perfection as it is possible for human nature to do. With me it consti¬ 
tutes one of the strongest illustrations of the innate depravity of our 
nature that a large portion of his countrymen, who, without his aid, 
would probably never have been an independent country, reviled him 
when hving, and after death, when the unanimous voice of the whole 
civilized world compelled them to acknowledge his virtues and his wisdom, 
have churlishly and foolishly refused to follow his example or his pre¬ 
cepts.”— Jeremiah Mason's Memoirs, p. 36. 

FRIENDSHIP OF AGED INFREQUENT 

“Warm friendships are not often contracted among men who have 
arrived at or pa^ssed the middle age of hfe.” 

—Jeremiah Mason, letter to wife, 1816. 

A SLOW JUDGE 

Being asked what he thought of a judicial appointment, he replied; 
“He’ll make a slow judge.” “Do you mean, Mr. Mason, that his mental 
processes are slow?” “No, it’s not that; but he’ll have twice as much 
to do as most other judges. He’ll have first to decide what’s right, and 
then to dicide whether he’ll do it.” 

OBJECTED TO JUDGE’S QUESTION 

A distinguished judge before v^hom Mason was trying a case put to 
a witness a question of very doubtful competency. Mr. Mason bluntly 
exclaimed; “If your Honor puts that question for us, we don’t want 
it; if you put it for the other side, I object that it isn’t evidence.” 

HIS REBUKE OF AN INSURANCE PRESIDENT 

Just as Mason was about to leave his office one morning, a pompous 
president of an insurance company called to consult him. Said Mason; 
“Mr. B., I must be in court in twenty minutes. Please state the facts 
in your case as tersely as you can, and I will give you my best attention.” 
But Mr. B. could not help stating his own views of the law as he proceed¬ 
ed, and it was pretty obvious that he would not be able to finish his state¬ 
ment within the time allowed. The old lawyer was silent and indignant, 
during the twenty minutes, then rose, looked at his watch and said, 
“Good morning, Mr. B., were you always such a d—d fool?” 

SUBPOENA THE ANGEL 

Mason was once engaged to defend a clergyman accused of a capital 
crime (the E. K. Avery case), and was repeatedly bothered by the 
attempts of the brethren to make him substitute theological for legal 
evidence. As he was making out his brief, one of these sympathizers 


472 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


with the prisoner rushed into the room with the remark that Brother 
Avery was certainly innocent, for an angel from heaven had appeared 
to him the night before, and had given him direct assurance of the fact. 
“That is very important evidence, indeed,” was Mr. Mason’s gruff 
reply; “but can you subpoena that angel?” 

SURPRISED THE WITNESS 

Mr. Mason possessed to a marked degree the instinct for the weak 
point. He was once cross-examining a witness who had previously 
testified to having heard Mr. Mason’s client make a certain statement, 
and it was upon the establishment of that statement that the^ adver¬ 
sary’s case was based. Mr. Mason led the witness around to this state¬ 
ment, and again it was repeated verbatim. Then, without warning, he 
walked to the stand, and pointing straight at the witness, said, in his 
high impassioned voice: “Let’s see that paper you have in your waist¬ 
coat pocket.” 

Taken completely by surprise, the witness mechanically took the paper 
from the pocket indicated and handed it to Mr. Mason. The lawyer 
slowly read the exact words of the witness in regard to the statement, 
and called attention to the fact that they were in the hand writing of 
the lawyer on the other side. “Mr. Mason, how under the sun did 
you know that paper was there?” asked a brother lawyer. “Well,” 
replied Mr. Mason, “I thought he gave that part of his testimony more 
as if he’d heard it, and I noticed every time he repeated it he put his hand 
to his waistcoat pocket, and then let it fall again when he got through.” 

HUGH McCULLOCH’S OPINION OF MASON 

“In 1832 I went to hear Mr. Mason, before a House committee of the 
legislature of Massachusetts, in favor of a bill for the incorporation of 
a company to construct a railroad from Boston to Salem. Mr. Mason 
was then in the meridian of life, and without a peer in his profession. He 
was employed to appear before the committee. I went to hear him. 
He had not spoken five minutes before my attention was absorbed, 
and although he spoke for nearly two hours, I was sorry when he closed. 
His argument was conclusive. The impression which it made upon my 
mind has never been lost. It was the first time I had heard a purely 
logical speech. It was not eloquence, but concise, clear, cogent argument. 
It was profound, yet so clear that anybody could follow and understand 
it. The committee reported favorably upon the bill, and it was soon 
after passed by both branches of the legislature. Mr. Mason was full six 
feet and a half in height, and upwards of three hundred pounds in weight. 
His head, which while speaking, was always slightly inclined towards 
the right shoulder, was well formed, and, although very large, seemed to 
be small in comparison with his tall and massive body. His dress was 
careless, if not slovenly, and there was a wide show of linen between his 
trousers and his waistcoat. He spoke deliberately. His enunciation 
and his command of language were perfect. He was not an orator, and 
was doubtless inferior to many of the lawyers of the day as an advocate 
before a jury; but in legal knowledge, and in clear and cogent logic, he 
had no equal, not even in Mr. Webster.” 

—Hugh McCulloch's ^ Men and Measures of Half a Century,' SJf.. 

WEBSTER’S OPINION OF MASON 

“I regard Jeremiah Mason as eminently superior to any other lawyer 
whom I ever met. I should rather, with my own experience (and 1 
have had some pretty tough experiences with him), meet them all com¬ 
bined in a case than to meet him alone and single-handed. He was the 
keenest lawyer that I ever met or read about. If a man had Jeremiah 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


473 


Mason and he did not get Ins case, no human ingenuity or learning 
could get it. He drew from a very deep fountain. Yes, I should think 
he did, from his great height.” 

At another time being asked who was the greatest lawyer in the 
United States, he replied: 

“I should say, of course, John Marshall; but if you should take me 
by the throat and run me back into the corner, and demand, ‘Now, 
Webster, upon honor, who is the greatest lawyer?’ I should have to say, 
‘Jeremiah Mason.’ ” 

Webster further said he owed his success to the close attention he was 
compelled to pay for nine successive years from day to day to Mason’s 
efforts at the same bar; and that he was indebted to Mason for the change 
in his style in speaking and writing. 

MASON AND WEBSTER CONTRASTED 

‘‘Mr. Mason was fourteen years older than his friend (Webster), and 
on this account, as well as from the former’s commanding position at 
the bar, the younger man looked up with deference to the elder. And 
from the intellectual characteristics of the two men, Mr. Mason was 
fitted to exercise a valuable influence over his younger friend. Mr. 
Webster had more various power than Mr. Mason, but the latter was his 
equal, at least, in logical force, and his superior in legal learning. Mr. 
Mason’s whole mind and time were given to the law; not so Mr. Webster’s. 
The difference between them may be thus stated: Mr. Mason was a great 
lawyer, but Mr. Webster was a great man practicing the law. Nor had 
the latter Mr. Mason’s love of labor and patience in legal research; 
indeed, Mr. Webster’s natural temperament was rather inclined to ease 
and averse to exertion. It required a strong force to rouse his great 
powers into full activity.” 

— Clark’s ^Reproduction of the Memoir of Jeremiah Mason,’ If.2. 
LOVE OF HOME 

‘‘I am here constantly suri’ounded by people for whom I do not care 
a biscuit; at home I am in the midst of all those 1 hold dear. Here 
(Washington) nothing concerns or interests me; there, everything.” 
—Letter to his wife, from Washington, when Senator, Feb. 11, 
1813. For this reason he resigned after serving four years. Memoirs, 
by Clark, 60. 

RUFUS KING’S ELOQUENCE 

“Rufus Edng is the most eloquent man I ever heard.” 

—Letter to Wife, Wash., Dec. 11, 191^. 

JOHN RANDOLPH 

“I have seen a good deal of the celebrated John Randolph, who is 
in all respects the most extraordinary man I ever knew. He differs 
essentially both in person and mind from his species. I do not think so 
highlv of his talents as I did before I saw him, but he is more eccentric 
than'^he is reputed. I do not think he will long sustain his reputation 
for talents. * * * All the world here are talking about Randolph, 

who has been talking in the House of Representatives all the time of 
the session for three full days in succession, about everybody and every¬ 
thing. He observes little or no connection in his discourses, and produces 
no effect except entirely to destroy his own reputation and influence. 
I have not heard him during any of the very long speeches. But those 
who did are almost universally disgusted. His standing and influence 
are lost.”— Letter to his wife. Wash., D. C., Jan. 24-, 1816. 


474 


GHEAT SAYIJSGS BY GREAT LAYWEKS 


CHOSE PORTSMOUTH OVER BOSTON—WHY? 

Mr. Mason chose Portsmouth over Boston, as a place of residence, in 
1897, because he believed its future progress and prosperity were more 
assured.— Memoirs, 165, 

ARGUMENT IN THE DARTMOUTH CASE 

“Mr. Webster’s celebrated argument has more variety of illustration 
and more rhetorical finish than that of Mr. Mason before the Supreme 
Court of New Hampshire, but all the legal and constitutional points 
taken by the former were anticipated by Mr. Mason, and stated with 
no less clearness and force.” (And Mr. Webster stated this was the case.) 

— Memoirs, 172. The statement of Geo. S. Hillard. 


PREJUDICE 

“It is a well known characteristic of prejudice that the individual 
under its influence is often wholly unconscious of it. It bears on him 
like the elements. He does not feel the pressure even while borne away 
with it. The subtle power is operating while he is ignorant of its force 
over his judgment. The mind, hke the body, seems to be exposed to 
epidemic diseases, against which no care or caution can defend. Prej¬ 
udice has always been one of the chief sources of the errors which have 
prevailed in the world. It extends sometimes over whole communities, 
and embraces aU subjects that come under the operation of the human 
mind, whether physical, moral, religious, or political. The existence of 
prejudice often constitutes the most insuperable obstacle to the investi¬ 
gation of truth. An opinion resting in mere prejudice, and adopted with¬ 
out knowledge or investigation, often becomes so firmly fixed and settled 
as to resist the clearest demonstration of its falsity. 

“Lord Bacon, who did so much to enlighten the world at the end of 
the dark ages, terms these prejudices ‘the idols of the mind.’ They 
were worsliipped. The idol ever held mankind bound down in stronger 
chains, or more cruel bondage. They were unable to relieve themselves, 
or receive relief when offered. Our country has had its share of this evil. 
The bigotry and intolerance of former times in matters of religion 
may be justly attributed to this ease. We of this age can readily discover 
the errors caused by the prejudices of our ancestors. Will not the succeed¬ 
ing age as distinctly perceive the errors of this, arising from the same 
source? What but prejudice is the cause of the political divisions and 
feuds that distract the country? 

“When the counsel Avho opened for the defense slightly alluded to 
the prejudicial murders of former times, in a neighboring State, on 
accusations of witchcraft, it excited a smile of the opposing counsel. 
They, probably, thought that nothing in this enhghtened age could come 
into competition with the absurdity of that popular prejudice. Let it 
be remembered that the actors in that tragedy were men distinguished 
for their piety, learning and intelligence. They were borne away by 
the popular delusion. Some of them lived to discover and bitterly to 
repent their mad error. At the annual returns of the sad period they 
kept their fasts with great severity of observance. But it was too late 
for relief in this world; their victims had been sacrificed.” 

— To the Jury in defense of Rev. E. K. Avery, for the murder of 
Sarah M. Cornell, Dec. 21, 1832. Tried at Newport, R. I. The 
case lasted 27}4. days. The defendant was cleared. Mr. Mason 
was theji 65 years of age. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


475 


LORD HALE’S MAXIM 

“Lord Hale lays down the maxim, ‘that it is better one hundred of 
the' guilty should escape, than one who is innocent should suffer.’ 
Suppose a ease where there were 100 men on trial, 99 of whom were 
guilty and one was innocent; and not knowing which was the innocent 
one, you must give a verdict of guilty against the whole 100, or acquit 
the whole. Could you sacrifice the one who was innocent, in order to 
insure the conviction of the guilty? You could not do it, gentlemen. 
No man with human feelings could endure it. Apply that case to the 
evidence which you are required to find the defendant guilty upon 
circumstantial evidence. You have no right to calculate chances. There 
must be a moral certainty. You cannot condemn while a legal doubt 
exists; and so long as there is a remote probability, no matter how far 
off, that is, a legal doubt, and the defendant is entitled to the benefit of it.” 

—In defense of Rev. E. K. Avery, to the jury. 

THE FEMALE CHARACTER 

“That there is a charm, a refinement, a delicacy in the female sex 
superior to man, no civilized community has ever doubted. It is female 
character, when pure and unstained, which contributes to the embellish¬ 
ment and refinement of society in the highest degree, but in the same 
proportion as woman, when chaste and pure excels the other sex, by 
just so much when profligate, does she sink below them; and if you were 
to seek for some of the vilest monsters in vdckedness and depravity, 
you would find them in the female form.” 

— To Jury, in defense of Rev. E. K. Avery. 

LAW PRESUMES DEFENDANT TO BE INNOCENT 

“The main points for you to consider are whether the crime was com¬ 
mitted at all, and if so, whether the defendant had motive, opportunity 
and time to commit the crime. If these points are proved against him, 
the law still interposes her shield to protect him until there is satis¬ 
factory proof of his guilt. This is the great foundation of all our security. 
Nothing but legal proof, given here at the Bar, shall reach the defendant. 
Conviction shall not follow mere probability. Legal proof, judicial 
certainty, are one thi^—common belief, ordinary suspicion, are another 
thing; and it is very important that these be not confounded. The law 
presumes the defendant to be innocent till he shall be, by lawful evidence, 
proved to be guilty. The jurors are his sworn protectors against all 
other dangers. A juror may have a strong belief that a fact exists, but 
there is not proof of it. All that a jury say by their verdict is that there 
is not legal proof. They may be satisfied that there is strong suspicion, 
strong probability, but it does not amount to legal proof. Let the 
popular humor be what it may, it is not legal proof, and we know not 
where it will carry us. It is your duty to stand by the legal proof. This 
duty is imposed on you by the common principles of humanity, by your 
oaths, and by the laws of the land; and this duty I have no doubt you will 
perform. I have not troubled my mind to inquire how the popular 
humor came to be as it is. If the popular breeze blows in one direction 
now, it may shift to another, for it is mere wind. It is raised for no 
cause—it may die for no cause.” 

—From argument to jury by Mason in defense of Rev. E. K. Avery. 


STANLEY MATTHEWS (1824-1889), Ohio 

SOCIAL ORDER 


“This social order, from the nature of the case, in the history of the 
race, obeys the law of evolution and development. The various forms 
which at any given period we find co-existing in the world, as there are 
now, and always have been, many are but the stages of this development. 
Everywhere and at all times we see the energies of man displayed and 
exerted in efforts to conquer the world, without and within, to subdue 
the material universe in order to support and improve his physical and 
to unfold and develop his spiritual life. And, if too often history has 
to record the fall of nations and the lapse of races and peoples into bar¬ 
barism, and even to lament their extinction, nevertheless, the law of 
progress, in all that we know and all civilization, on the whole asserts ^ 
itself, even by means of adverse experiences; for the education of the 
world has come from the knowledge of both good and evil. The hope 
of this advancement and progressive improvement in the conditions of 
our earthly life, and increase in the elements of individual wellbeing, 
is what sweetens the bitterness of living, makes light its burdens, and 
turns sacrifice into delight. Without it, it is not perhaps too much to 
say that life would scarcely be worth living; and that society itself 
becoming stagnant, would also become corrupt, and of corruption die. 
At least, out of this hope is begotten all the grace and loveliness of life, 
all art and literature, painting, poetry, sculpture, architecture and music, 
everything that cultivates and embellishes our earthly habitation. 

It were rash to predict whether perfect social order would ever be realized 
by mankind on the earth. But as we are taught to pray for it, we ought 
not to cease to expect it. We shall, at least, know it when it comes. It 
will be the kingdom of God upon earth, in which His will shall be done, 
even as it is done in Heaven. In it there will be a place for every man in 
which to do the work for which he is best fitted, wherein he will be able 
to perfect his individual being by the most complete and efficient exer¬ 
tion of every faculty and quality that constitute his characteristics as 
a man, and whereby he will have the opportunity of accomplishing the 
greatest good both for others and himself; when every right will be the 
most richly enjoyed, when every duty will be the most faithfully per¬ 
formed; where the perfect law of justice will be accompHshed in every 
human relation, and cover with its invincible shield the weakest from 
every conceivable wrong.” 

—Stanley Matthews, Address before State Bar Ass’n. at Albany, 

N. Y., Sept. 20, 1881. 

Mr. Matthews was born in Ohio, 1824, and died 1889, journalist, 
lawyer, judge, soldier, politician, legislator, and jurist. Justice of U. S. 
Supreme Court (1878-1889). Of his argument before the Electoral 
Commission, Senator Edmunds said: “Almost first among the foremost 
of the strictly legal and Constitutional arguments that influenced that 
tribunal.” 


MORAL CONVICTIONS 

“It would cost me a very painful effort to appear today in any case, 
it has cost me a very difficult and painful mental effort to appear in this. 
It is easy to swim with the tide, to go with the current, to follow in the 
wake of the multitude. To do things that are popular is not hard, but 
to stand by a man’s moral convictions, in opposition not to enemies 
but to friends, tries a man. If yom* Honors please, it tries me. Except 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


477 


the loss of dear children, this is the most painful experience of my life, 
^ be told that I am an enemy of religion, that I am an opponent of the 
Bible, that I have lost in this community my Christian character, and 
that my children and grandchildren will reproach my memory for this 
day’s work. For all that, and more, has not been whispered merely 
through the crowds, but has been told me to my face. If your Honors 
please, I would be silent today if I dared, but I have no choice.” 

—Stanley Matthews, opening words in case of Cincinnati School 
Board's prohibiting the reading of the Bible in the schools of that 
City, on behalf of the Board .—7 'Gt. Am. Lawyers' Jil2. 


ENERGY AND DETERMINATION 

“The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference 
between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the 
insignificant, is energy—invincible determination —a purpose once fixed 
and then death or victory! That quality will do anything that can be 
done in this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, 
will make a two legged creature a man without it.” 

—Fowell Buxton, ^Smiles Self-Help,' 293 


MULES GOING SOUTH TO TEACH 

“There,” said Emund Randolph, of Virginia, to Uriah Tracy, Senator 
from Connecticut, remembering that mules were extensively bred in the 
latter State, “go some of your constituents.” (The asses were going from 
Washington south over the Long Bridge into Virginia). “Yes,” replied 
Tracy, “they are going south to be school-masters in Virginia.” 

—2 'Great American Lawyers,' Jt.65, Art. James Gould. 


JOHN LORD SOMERS 

“Probably no man ever commenced practice as an advocate in England 
with such high and varied qualifications. He was consummately skilled 
as a lawyer—from the practice of commencing an action, which he had 
learned as a lad in his father’s office, to- the most abstruse doctrines of 
real property, which he had imbibed from Winnington, and the most 
enlarged views of general jurisprudence, with which he had become 
familiar from his civil law studies in Oxford. He was moreover deeply 
versed in all constitutional learning, and besides being a fine classical 
scholar, he was familiarly acquainted with the languages and the literature 
of all the polished nations of Europe. Above all, he had steady habits 
of application, and he could not only make the necessary active exertion, 
but undergo the necessary drudgery and submit to the necessary sacrifices 
to ensure success at the English bar.” 

—J Campbell's 'Lives of the Chancellors,' 8If.. 


Tyler: “John Tyler’s administration may be included in a parenthesis 
and left out in reading our history without the least break in the sense.” 
— Thos. F. Marshall. 






R. T. MERRICK (1826-1885), Maryland 


LOYALTY 

“Gentlemen of the jury, the district attorney has invoked your loyalty. 
Loyalty is a word that does not properly belong to the lexicon of republics, 
it means the faithfulness of the citizen to the supreme power of the 
republic. What is the supreme power of the American Republic? The 
Constitution of the United States, and the laws in pursuance of that 
Constitution. The loyalty of the Austrian is due to the successors of 
the Caesars; the loyalty of the Englishman is due to the Queen; the loyalty 
of the Frenchman is due to Napoleon; but the loyalty of the American 
citizen is due to no mortal man, but due to the spirit of human liberty, 
incarnate in the Constitution of the United States. Be loyal to that. 
Be loyal to the law. Above all things, be loyal to yourselves, and do 
your duty. ‘A feeling of duty performed,’ as has been said by a great 
man, will follow you through the world; but a feeling of duty unper¬ 
formed will pursue you with the lash of affliction wherever you may go.’ 
All evils that are physical can be avoided; but evil that comes from the 
conscience, when it arraigns us day by day, cannot be fled from. ‘You 
may take up the mngs of the morning, and flee to the uttermost parts 
of the earth;’ but there is neither rock nor corner in which you can hide 
yourself from it. Go forth then, gentlemen, from your jury box with 
a conscience free and unembarrassed; a conscience that will say to you 
in all time to come: ‘You have done your duty.’ I invoke for the prisoner 
not your mercy, but your most deliberate judgment. * * * If he 

is guilty, convict him; if he is innocent, acquit him. May the eternal God 
so guide your judgments and enlighten your convictions that the remem¬ 
brance of this day and the day of your verdict may hereafter and forever 
be a sweet and pleasant recollection.” 

— R. T. Merrick in the Trial of John H. Surratt for the Murder 
of Abraham Lincoln. For Defense. 

SOME ACCOUNT OF MERRICK 

Richard Thomas Merrick was born in Charles Co., Md., Jan. 25, 
1826, and died in Washington, D. C., June 23, 1885. Practiced in Cliicago, 
lU., till 1864, when he moved to Washington, where for twenty years 
he stood high in his profession. He was engaged in the defense of Pres. 
Johnson, in his impeachment in 1868; and in 1876-7 was in the Star- 
Route cases. He was a brilliant debater and pubhc speaker. Diming 
the campaign of 1884 he took an active part in the Democratic canvass. 
He||was a lecturer on Constitutional Law in the Georgetown University. 


LORD LYNDHURST’S GOOD NATURE 

When Cleave the newsvender was tried in the Court of Exchequer on a 
government information, he conducted his own case, and was treated 
with much indulgence by Lord Lyndhurst the judge. Cleave began 
his defence by observing that he was afraid he should before he sat down, 
give some rather awkward illustrations of the truth of the adage that 
“he who acts as his own counsel has a fool for his client.” “Ah, Mr. 
Cleave,” said his lordship with great pleasantry, “ah, Mr. Cleave, don’t 
you mind that adage: it was framed by the lawyers.'' 



GEORGE P. METCALF (1844-1887), Ohio 


Geo. P. Metcalf on Lawyers: “Of all the men on earth who can¬ 
not afford to be dishonest, for the sake of humanity, are lawyers, as in 
their hands rest the destinies of nations.” 

HIS RIDICULE OF A TECHNICAL YOUNG LAWYER 

“If you and I (speaking to the author of this work) had the critical, 
discriminating mind of our young lawyer friend here, we’d make ^eat 
lawyers. We would be satisfied, for instance, with the story of Achilles’ 
vulnerable heel. Not so, our young friend. For when told that the mother 
held the babe Achilles by the heel-cord, when she dipped him in the 
river Stix, and therefore did not submerge that part of his anatomy, 
so as to make it invulnerable, as the dipping had the rest of his person 
to the enemies’ arrows. Why, we would be satisfied: not so our mutual 
friend here. He would want to know which foot it was, the right or the 
left, and he would spend weeks looking that up. Now, you see he has an 
investigating mind, which you and I have not. These are the Idnd of men 
that make great lawyers!" 

THE WORD “UNABRIDGED” NOT IN THE “UNABRIDGED 
DICTIONARY” 

“Metcalf,” said a student of the law in his office, “do you know the 
word ‘unabridged’ is not in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, and 
therefore is not defined?” 

“Oh, yes it is. Burns,” who, by the way, was older than Metcalf, 
“let us understand ourselves, now. I’ll bet you the lemonade for the 
crowd in the office that it is; let us write down just what we are betting 
upon, so there will be no quibbling.” Burns accordingly wrote down the 
proposition. “Now,” said Metcalf, “let us understand ourselves. What 
do you mean by ‘unabridged’?” “Why, anything that is complete, some¬ 
thing that has not been shortened,” replied Burns. “Well, that is what 
I understand it to mean. Now, get your dictionary. It was gotten, 
searched carefully, and the word not found where it should be. “There,” 
said Bm-ns, “set up the lemonade.” “But hold on a minute. You 
haven’t got Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, according to your own 
definition. It is abridged just that one word at least, if it is not in the 
book; as you say, anytlnng that is unabridged is something that is 
complete—not shortened, something that has not been shortened; the 
book you have has been shortened that word, therefore, it is not an 
‘unabridged’ dictionary. Go and get an ‘unabridged dictionary,’ and 
it will be there,, because this one is incomplete, shortened, at least, as to 
that word.” 

Burns, accordingly treated the five or six then in the office. 

REPLY TO JOHN McSWEENEY 

“It is unfortunate, gentlemen of the jury, that Lorain County has 
not an abler prosecuting attorney than my humble self; but it could 
not get a better one for the $900.00 yearly salary I receive. I am just 
one of you. I was brought up on the farm, milked the cows, plowed the 
fields, mowed the grass with a scythe, cradled wheat, chopped wood, went 
barefooted throughout the summer, went to district school, a little while 
at the preparatory department of Oberlin College, studied law, was 
elected to this office, as hardly anyone else would take it, and here I 


480 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


am, pitted against the famous lawyer, John McSweeney, one of the most 
famous criminal lawyers in the U. S., who gets $500 a day—in two days 
more than I get for a year’s work. Why, gentlemen, when I heard Mc¬ 
Sweeney was attorney for the prisoner at the bar my first thought was 
to nolle the indictment (dismiss the case), as I knew I was no match for 
him. I wanted to get under the bed, as I dreaded to meet such a lawyer 
in mental combat; but, gentlemen, that would have been dishonorable 
and cowardly. I have taken an oath to discharge the duties of this 
office to the best of my ability; and so have you gentlemen. We all 
have a duty to perform. I am no equal to McSweeney, nor is Judge 
Hale, here on the bench, nor are you; but we must protect our characters, 
the chastity of our homes, protect our mothers, our wives, and our sisters, 
in the dead hours of night, when resting from the trials of the day, in 
sweet sleep. You are going to do your duty; you are not going to be 
carried away with flights of oratory, you are going to think of your home, 
think of the oath you have taken, your duty, as a man, to the community 
in which we all live, and which we must all guard. I am not afraid of the 
result in this case, as you are all honest, common sense men. Use your 
honesty and common sense in deciding this case, and I shall be content.” 

The above is an excerpt from Metcalf’s speech in a rape case at Elyria, 
O. Two young men were on trial for raping an old German woman, 
57 years old. They were both convicted. McSweeney told Judge Hale, 
the trial judge, that he could not clear a prisoner in Lorain Co. while 
Metcalf was prosecutor. Judge Hale, the ablest of his time at the Lorain 
County Bar, and later considered the ablest in Cleveland, where he 
wound up his career, said several times that he regarded Metcalf the 
ablest jury lawyer, counting results, with whom he had ever come in 
contact. He would take the fewest facts and build up the strongest 
argument that it was his good fortune to listen to. 


A. R. WEBBER’S TRIBUTE 

“Mr. Metcalf was three years in the War of 1861-5, was engaged in 
many battles, among them Gettysburg; contracted rheumatism and 
chronic diarrhoea in that service, from the effects of which he began to 
waste away at the age of thirty. Between thirty and forty-four, the age 
of his death, his infirmities overtook him to such an extent that at thirty 
he was using a cane; soon thereafter a crutch and cane; later two crutches, 
and finally to the wheel chair, for the last part of his fife. During 
this period he was carried up into his office and down from his office into 
the court-room, but he never surrendered, but continuing to try law-suits 
until the end came. He would stand before the jury, leaning back against 
the table, supported by his two crutches, with his long hair, swarthy 
complexion, six feet high, wasted by his diseases, day after day, with the 
greatest arguments ever made to a jury. And, as a cross-examiner, he 
had such success that many of his cases came to him with these words 
upon the tongue of his new cfient, who had been grilled by him, when 
Metcalf was against him, ‘I want you to tear that defendant to pieces 
as you did me!’ Mr. Metcalf had the most wonderful courage of any man 
with whom I ever came in contact. He was known by all, far and near, 
even by old ladies, as ‘George.’ We were partners for nine years. We 
were such at his decease. He spent one term in the le^slature of Ohio, 
while on crutches; refused the Common Pleas judgeship because of ill- 
health; refused to run for Congress for the same reason; and despite of Ms 
health he accumulated enough to care for Ms widow. A kinder husband, 
truer brother, partner and citizen never hved. His passing away re¬ 
minded me of Wilham Wirt’s blind preacher of whom we have all 
read, and what a power he was.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


481 


COULD REACH THE JUGULAR VEIN 

“Mr. Metcalf had wonderful adaptation for the law; while he was well 
grounded in legal principles, his rheumatic condition prevented close 
study, but he could tell what ought to be done, and what the law upon 
a given point ought to be. Was a great manager in a law-suit. Besides, 
he was one of the most analytical reasoners I ever knew. He would 
differentiate cases, and was such an enthusiastic believer in his position 
that he would make the court, the jury and the hangers on see the thing 
as he saw it. And thus would walk out of court winner, if a case could 
be won.”— G. J. Clark, who practiced at the same bar for ten years. 


JAMES WILSON GREATER LAWYER THAN JUDGE 

“ ‘James Wilson on the bench was not the equal of Mr. Wilson at the 
bar, nor did his lectures entirely meet the expectations that had been 
formed,’ wrote William Rawle, who practiced under him; and another 
contemporarj^ said: ‘These lectures (since included in his works, publish¬ 
ed in 1804), have not met with general approbation, nor is their excellence 
altogether undisputed!’ It seems that his violent criticisms of Blackstone, 
and his ultra-Federalist views as to the powers of the National Govern¬ 
ment, did not commend themselves to the lawyers or to the public. 
* * * The truth is, Wilson’s temper and habits were those of an 

advocate, rather than of a judge. His style was diffusive; and the lectures, 
though scholarly, and elegant essays on general jurisprudence embellished 
wth historical allusions, were not useful instruction in Common Law.” 

— Warren’s 'History of the American Barf 3Jt8. 


WENDELL PHILLIPS’ ORATORY 

“I have heard most of the great orators of the world, but none of them 
produced such an immediate and lasting effect upon their audience as 
Wendell Phillips. He was the finest type of a cultured New Englander. He 
was the recipient of the best education possible in his time and with inde¬ 
pendent means which enabled him to pursue his studies and career. Be¬ 
sides he was one of the handsomest men I ever saw upon the platform, and 
in his inspired moments met one’s imaginative conception of a Greek God. 

“Phillips rarely made a gesture or spoke above the conversational, but 
his musical voice reached the remotest corners of the hall. The eager 
audience, fearful of losing a w'ord, would bend forward with open inouths 
as well as attentive ears. It was always a hostile audience at the beginning 
of Mr. Phillips’ address, but before the end he swayed them to applause, 
tears, or laughter, as a skilled performer upon a perfect instrument. 
His subject was nearly always slavery, his views very extreme and for 
immediate abolition, but at that time he had a very small following. 
Nevertheless, his speeches, especially because of the riots and controver¬ 
sies they caused, set people thinking, and largely increased the hostility 
to slavery, especially to its extension.” 

— Chauncey M. Depew, 'Memories of Eighty Years’, 313. 




SAMUEL F. MILLER (1816-1890), Iowa 

TRIAL BY JURY 

“I must confess that my practice in the courts, before I came to the 
bench, left upon my mind the impression that as regards contests 
in the courts in civil suits, the jury system was one of doubtful utility; 
and if I had then been called upon, as a legislator, to provide for a system 
of trial in that class of actions, I should have preferred a court constituted 
of three or more judges, so selected from different parts of the district 
or circuit in which they presided as to prevent, so far as possible, any 
preconcerted action or agreement of interest or opinion, to decide all 
the questions of law and fact in the case, rather than the present jury 
system. * * * experience of twenty-five years on the bench, 

and an observation during that time of cases which come from all the 
courts of the United States to the Supreme Court for review, as well as 
of cases tried before me at nisi prius have satisfied me that when the 
principles above stated are faithfully apphed by the trial court, and the 
jury is a fair one, as a method of ascertaining the truth in regard to 
disputed questions of fact, a jury is in the main as valuable as an equal 
number of judges would be, or any less number. And I must say that in 
my experience in the conference room of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, which consists of nine judges, I have been surprised to 
find how readily those judges come to an agreement upon questions of 
law, and how often they disagree in regard to questions of fact, which 
apparently are as clear as the law. I have noticed this so often and so 
much that I am willing to give the benefit of my observation on this 
subject to the pubhc, that judges are not pre-eminently fitted over other 
men of good judgment in business affairs to decide upon mere questions 
of disputed fact.” 

— Mr. Justice Miller, in an article on The System of Trial by Jury.'’ 

Am. Law Review, vol. XXI, pp. 861-863. 

SPECIFIC POWERS OF GOVERNMENT 

“It is believed to be one of the chief merits of the American system 
of written constitutional law, that all the powers intrusted to govern¬ 
ment, whether state or national, are divided into the three grand depart¬ 
ments—the executive, the legislative and judicial. That the functions 
appropriate to each of these branches of government shall be vested in 
a separate body of public servants, and that the perfection of the system 
requires that the fines which separate and define these departments 
shall be broadly and clearly defined. It is also essential to the successful 
working of this system that the persons intrusted with power in any one 
of these branches shall not be permitted to encroach upon the powers 
confided to the others, but that each shall by the law of its creation be 
limited to the exercise of the powers appropriate to its own department 
and no other. To these general propositions there are in the Constitution 
of the United States some important exceptions. One of these is, that 
the President is so far made a part of the legislative power that his assent 
is required to the enactment of all statutes and resolutions of Congress. 

“This, however, is so only to a limited extent, for a bill may become a 
law notwithstanding the refusal of the President to approve it, by a vote 
of two-thirds of each House of Congress. 

“So, also the Senate is made a partaker in the functions of appointing 
officers and making treaties, which are supposed to be properly executive, 
by requiring its consent to the appointment of such officers and the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


483 


ratification of treaties. The Senate also exercises the judicial power of 
trying impeachments, and the House of preferring articles of impeach¬ 
ment. 

“In the main, however, that instrument, the model on which are con¬ 
structed the fundamental laws of the States, has blocked out with singular 
precision, and in bold lines, in its three primary articles, the allotment of 
power to the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of 
the government. It also remains true, as a general rule, that the powers 
confided by the Constitution to one of these departments cannot be 
exercised by another.” 

— Mr. Justice Miller, in Kilhourn v. Thompson, 103, U. S., 190. 
PURITY OF ELECTIONS 

“It is as essential to the successful working of this Government that 
the great organisms of its executive and legislative branches should be 
the free choice of the people as that the original form of it should be so. 
In absolute governments, where the monarch is the source of all power, 
it is still held to be important that the exercise of that power shall be 
free from the influence of extraneous violence and internal corruption. 
In a republican government, like ours, where political power is reposed 
in representatives of the entire body of the people, chosen at short inter¬ 
vals by popular elections, the temptation to control these elections by 
violence and by corruption is a constant source of danger. Such has been 
the history of all republics, and, though ours has been comparatively 
free from both these evils in the past, no lover of his country can shut 
his eyes to the fear of future danger from both sources. If the recurrence 
of such acts as these prisoners stand convicted of are too common in one 
quarter of the country, and ^ve omen of danger from lawless violence, 
the free use of money in elections, arising from the vast growth of recent 
wealth in other quarters, presents equal cause of anxiety. If the Govern¬ 
ment of the United States has within its constitutional domain no author¬ 
ity to provide against these evils, if the very sources of power may be 
poisoned by corruption or controlled by violence and outrage, without 
legal restraint, then, indeed, is the country in danger, and its best powers, 
its highest purposes, the hopes which it inspires, and the love which 
enshrines it, are at the mercy of the combinations of those who respect 
no right but brute force, on the one hand, and unprincipled corruptionists 
on the other.” 

—Samuel F. Miller, Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 United States Rep., 
651 {1883). 

Miller grew up on his father’s farm in Ky., and until 12 had no means 
of education. His general schooling was confined to the schools of Rich¬ 
mond, Ky., for three years; studied medicine at Transylvania, Lexington, 
and graduated after two years; practiced medicine 10 years; believed the 
medical profession no science, but almost wholly empirical and untrust¬ 
worthy, and had no belief in the remedies he prescribed; studied and was 
admitted to the bar, in 1847; freed his slaves, and removed to Keokuk, 
Iowa, upon the advice of John J. Crittenden, achieved success at the Bar, 
and in less than 12 years was a member of the U. S. Supreme Court, 
at 46 years of age, by appointment of Lincoln, in 1862. 

“It is safe to say,” says Mr. Justice Harlan, “that with the exception 
of Chief Justice Marshall, no American judge has made a deeper impres¬ 
sion upon the jurisprudence of this country than he has.” 

THE U. S. CONSTITUTION 

“It is my profound belief that the wisdom of man, unaided by inspi¬ 
ration, has produced no other writing so valuable to humanity as the 
Constitution.”— Sam’l F. Miller. 


484 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE WEIGHT OF A DECISION 

“The convincing power of the opinion or decision in a reported case 
must depend very largely on the force of the reasoning by which it is 
supported, and of this every lawyer and every court must of necessity 
be his own judge.” 

— Sam'I F. Miller, from letter to Judge Jno. F. Dillon, Nov. 16, 1885. 
THE LAWYER’S ESTATE 

“The true lawyer is seized of an estate as secure and venerable as an 
estate in lands; its income, better than rents; its dignity, higher than 
ancestral acres.”— Sam'I F. Miller, a common saying. 

THE INFLUENCE OF A GREAT JUDGE 

“The influence of a great judge, embodied in the reports of a court 
of high character, will be felt as establishing rules of conduct and the 
decision of important questions, and will be commented upon and 
appreciated by a large class constituting a learned profession long after 
contemporary addresses or public efforts, of whatever character, shall 
have passed into forgetfulness.”— Sam'l F. Miller, remarks at death of 
Chief Justice Waite, 1888. 

THE USE OF ADJUDGED CASES 

“There are three kinds of cases to be considered by any judge of a court 
of last resort. There is a large class of cases, perhaps the largest, which 
must be decided by principles that are not disputed. That is to say, 
that the propositions advanced by the counsel on opposing sides are 
such as will be generally conceded, and need no support from judicial 
decisions. In these cases, which in my experience are the most numerous, 
the work of the judge is to determine from the case before him, that is, 
from the pleadings and the evidence, whether it falls within the principles 
offered by the plaintiff or defendant for its solution, or within some 
modification of these principles which counsel of either party has adopted. 
The decision of this question demands the highest general rules of law, 
which lie at its foundation as a science, and the aid given in such cases 
by the decisions of other courts is not much. The scientific arrangement 
of the facts of the case, as seen in the pleadings and evidence by a well- 
trained judicial mind, must in this class be always the main reliance 
for a sound administration of the law. 

“There is another class of cases, the decision of w'hich turns upon a 
construction of constitutions and statutes. In these the decisions of 
the highest courts of the government wliich adopted the Constitution 
or enacted the statutes should be conclusive in most eases. In the 
construction of the Constitution of the United States, or an act of Congress 
the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States ought, until 
revised by that court, to be followed almost without question. The 
court has given expression to the rule in regard to the construction of the 
State constitution and statutes of the highest courts of the States enacting 
them, in the adoption of the principle that even in the case of co-ordinate 
and concurrent jurisdiction it will follow those courts in the construction 
of the statutes and constitution of their respective States. 

“A third class of eases are those which arising under the general rules 
of the common law, or in equity, and in which the abstract reasons for 
one rule, or for another opposed to it, are nearly balanced where it is 
more important that the rule should be established and followed with 
uniformity than that one or the other rules should prevail. In this 
class, if there are differences in the cases decided, the question should 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


485 


be determined by the weight of authority. It is in this class of questions 
that adjudged cases are most useful, and in which the examination and 
comparison of them by counsel are of great aid to the court, and are 
likely to reward the laioor of those who make the examination thorough. 
Perhaps to this class should be added those in wliich the decisions of 
the courts have become ‘rules of property,’ governing the rights of parties 
to real or personal property. 

“As regards the relative weight to be given to the different courts whose 
decisions are relied on, it is more difficult to speak. 1 shall say nothing 
of the value of the decisions of the English Courts in questions purely 
of common law or in equity. Not because I underrate them, but because 
everyone understands their value, especially in equity and admiralty 
cases. 

“Leaving these, and the questions arising under State statutes, the 
value of a decision is estimated by the character of the court, or of the 
judge who delivered the opinion, or by both. These vary much in the 
courts of the United States. Without being invidious or undertaking to 
name other courts in the history and character of the Supreme Court of 
Massachusetts which entitle its reported decisions for the last hundred 
years to great consideration. But a decision often has a merit apart 
from the standing of the court in which it is made, owing to the high 
character of the judges of the court, or of the judge who delivered the 
opinion. Opinions delivered by such judges as Marshall, Taney, Kent 
and Shaw have a value apart from the courts in which they were delivered. 
Even the dissenting opinions of these men and their obiter dicta have 
weight in the minds of lawyers who have a just estimate of their character, 
which they cannot give to many courts of last resort or acknowledged 
ability. After all, the convincing power of the opinion or decision in 
a reported case must depend very largely on the force of the reasoning 
by which it is supported, and of this every lawyer and every court must 
of necessity be his and its own judge.”— Sand I F. Miller, in letter to Judge 
Jno. F. Dillon, Nov. 16, 1885. 

“COME TO THE POINT” 

Once Judge Miller was holding court, in the U. S. Circuit, at St. Louis, 
Mo., on an extremely warm day, and listening to a dry argument in an 
equity suit. The court-room was deserted save for the Judge, the lawyers 
and the court attendants, the latter of whom were dozing in their chairs. 
Miller’s cravat and collar were loosened and he was vigorously fanning 
himself, shifting uneasily in liis seat, and glaring impatiently at the 
lawyer, who had been talking on and on unceasingly. Finally he could 
no longer restrain himself; he started up, leaned over his desk, and fairly 
shouted at the lawyer the remark: “Con dem it. Brown, come to the 
point.” The lawyer, startled into confusion by this judicial interruption, 
said: “What point, your Honor?” “I don’t know,” blurted Judge 
Miller, ''any point, some point.” Poor Brown quit ignominiously, and 
with little hope of his having made a very strong impression. So terrible 
was the mthering manner of the Judge at times that even experienced 
attorneys dreaded the task of arguing a case before him which they thought 
not likely to meet his approval. And j^et, they appreciated his innate 
kindliness and sincerity, and when he suddenly died, Oct. 13, 1890, 
the members of the bar of the U. S. Supreme Court all felt that they 
had lost a friend. 

—Horace Stern, on Judge Miller, 6 Great AmericanLawyers, 583. 

THE COUNTRY LAWYER 

“The gi-eat lawyers of the futine are to be raised up in the agricultural 
regions, and Iowa stands as fair a chance as any other State. In the bar 


486 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


of the cities of New York and Philadelphia there are no worthy successors 
to the great men of the past. There are none who equal Sergeant and 
Binney of Philadelphia, nor Odgen of New York City, nor 
Boston. The practice consists of motions, attachments, injunctions, 
and cases referred to referees, and seldom is any case tried in the good 
old-fashioned way of argument and evidence under issues of law and fact, 
but each morning in the court appears a row of lawyers, standing in line, 
waiting to catch the eye of the judge and to ask his signature to orders 
and motions which control the case. This is not the way that ^eat 
lawyers are made. In the practice of the country towns, in an agricul¬ 
tural population hke Iowa, the young lawyer has his half dozen cases 
in a year, has ample time and opportunity to make full preparation, both 
as regards the facts of his case and the law; ha\dng but a few books, 
they are necessarily the best, and using them well and thoroughly, he 
investigates the principles at issue, runs them down to their source in 
the common law, and in doing this, familiarizes himself with the ^eat 
principles on which law is administered. This naturally makes him a 
lawyer on principle, with substantial bases of knowledge in the foundations 
of the law, and to this class must the nation look for its future Mansfields ) 
and Marshalls. * * * j have to add that the bar of Iowa is equal to 

the bar of the East, in all that pertains to the practice of law, and to the 
presentation of the principles on which the ease is founded. Twenty- 
four years of service have never brought me to be ashamed of the bar of 
my own State.” 

—From address at Opening of the Supreme Court of Iowa, at Des 

Moines, in the new Capitol, June 8, 1886. Stiles' ^^Recollections ” 

etc., 177. 

JUDGE JOHN F. DILLON ON MILLER AS A CONSTITUTIONAL 

LAWYER 

“By successive judgments of the Supreme Court, during Marshall’s 
thirty-five years’ service, from 1801 to 1835, the question was solved, 
and the Constitution received its fixed and permanent form as far as 
its original pro’vdsions are concerned. He and his associates established 
with equal firmness the principle on the one hand of nationahty in the 
general government, and on the other, the reserved rights of the States 
and the people as against the central government. And they also es¬ 
tablished the doctrine not less vital and important, that the Supreme 
Court, in Ambassador Bryce’s language—‘is the living voice of the Con¬ 
stitution,' and the ordained tribunal peacefully to settle all rival powers 
and pretensions of the States and Nation, and all controversies 
and cases, when presented for judical decisions, arising under the 
Constitution and laws of the United States. * * * The rebellion showed 
that the source of danger to the Union was at that time in the States, 
and not in the central government. Thirteen States were able to com¬ 
bine into a Confederacy, form and establish a government, raise armies 
and wage a formidable war for four years against the Union from which 
they bctd seceded. The natural effect of the failure of the Rebellion was 
a strong sentiment to enlarge and strengthen the powers of the States. 
First, came the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 14th Amend¬ 
ment, directly operating on the States and prohibiting any State of 
the Union from depriving any person of life, liberty or property, without 
due process of law, or denying to any person, black or white, the equal 
protection of the law, and, then, the 15th Amendment, forbidding a 
denial of the elective franchise, on account of race, color or previous 
condition of servitude. These amendments and the legislation of Con¬ 
gress, and of certain Southern States, gave rise to an enormous amount 
of htigation and to new questions as vital, as difficult, as supremely 
important as any that had arisen and been determined by the Court 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


487 


prior to the Civil War. In the decision of these questions, Mr. Justice 
Miller took a most conspicuous, active, influential, and often, decisive 
part. In Federal constitutional law, he became an acknowledged master, 
and his judgments have given him an established and permanent place 
in our judicial and constitutional liistory as a great and illustrious Judge, 
second only to Chief Justice Marshall.” 

—From leiter to E. H. Stiles — '^Stiles’ Recollections and Sketches," 

173-5. 

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY ON MILLER’S DECISIONS 

“Judge Miller, in his 28 years on the U. S. Supreme Bench, wrote 
783 opinions, of which 169 are dissenting opinions, and 141 relate to 
Constitutional law.”— "Stiles' Recollections," etc., 175. 

“Miller graduated in medicine, after three years study at Translvania 
University, Ky., practiced his profession ten years at Barboursville, 
Ky., but shared his office with a lawyer, whose books he secretly studied; 
deeming medicine not a science at all, but almost wholly empirical and 
untrustworthy, he was skeptical of the remedies administered. He was 
a good debater, and finally determined to practice law. It is said that 
one night, returning from a medical call, he threw his pill-bags over the 
fence, with the remark, ‘There, go it! I am going into a profession where 
talent is appreciated.’ Upon the advice of John J. Crittenden, removed 
from his native hotbed of democracy to the free State of Iowa, set¬ 
tling at Keokuk, where his abolitionism could have full play. He was 
then thirty-one, with a wife and two children. He soon acquired a 
good practice, not only in Iowa, but Illinois as well. For the next 15 
years, ’47 to ’62, he gave his time unceasingly to the law, and was then 
appointed by President Lincoln to the Supreme Bench of the United States. 

“This was the first and only public office he ever held. He held the 
position for 28 years, and died in harness. Was always a strong advocate 
for federal power, as against the State. His habit was to reason out 
an opinion, and then search for the authorities for the solution of the 
problems; and then, unless overwhelming authority to the contrary was 
brought to convince him that the conclusion he had reached was not in 
accord with the law, he adopted his own deliberations as final. He 
sought the sensible, the one which would produce the best practical 
results. 

“Great war questions came before the Court, while he was a member, 
whether the Confederacy was to be treated as a belligerent, and if so 
its rights as such, the rights of neutrals, litigation concerning confisca¬ 
tion, prizes, blockades and non-intercourse, questions of the jurisdiction 
of mifitary tribunals, the suspension of habeas corpus, problems of finan¬ 
cial legislation, tax laws, the reconstruction laws, the recent amendments 
to the Constitution, interstate commerce, telegraph and transconti¬ 
nental railroads, Indian wards, polygamy, anti-Chinese legislation, the 
Enforcement Act, Granger Cases, federal control over Congressional 
elections, the power of the President to remove from office, the Virginia 
Land Cases, Coupon Tax Cases, power of States to prohibit the liquor 
traffic, repudiation of State debts, riot cases, the Chicago anarchists, 
etc., etc. 

“Judge Miller was not profoundly learned, either in subjects of general 
education, or in the literature of the law. His success as a lawyer and 
as a Judge rested not upon his knowledge, so much as upon his powers 
of reasoning, upon the machinery of his mind rather than upon the raw 
material which he was able to furnish to that machinery. He was not 
of a scholarly turn of mind; he was too impatient to obtain common- 
sense results, to delve into the obscure learning of the past. His intellect 
was so acute, and his logical faculties so keenly developed that he relied 


488 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


largely upon his own ability to solve problems without reference to the 
wisdom of the older jurists. In short, the reason of the law was more 
important to him than a careful and technical adherence to the doctrine 
of stare decisis. He was a Marshall rather than a Story, a tMnker rather 
than a compiler of the thoughts of others. In every question that pre¬ 
sented itself he applied what may be called a legal ‘instinct,’ so that 
when he had arrived at his solution of any problem he might well have 
said, ‘If this is not .the law it ought to be.’ His masterly greatness in 
handling new constitutional questions led Mr. Justice Harlan to say 
in referring to him: ‘It is safe to say that, with the exception of Chief 
Justice Marshall, no American judge had made a deeper impression upon 
the jurisprudence of this country than he has.’ ” 

TESTIMONY OF HORACE STERN 

“The years during which Miller sat on the Supreme Court Bench 
were the most important, in the domain of constitutional law, next to 
the period of the constructive work of Marshall; and during those years 
Miller was the dominant personality on that bench, and the work then 
done by the Supreme Court was of the highest excellence, determining, 
as it did, the method of reconstructioD of the nation, preserving unimpair¬ 
ed the federal nature of the Government, in spite of the centralizing 
purpose of the 14th amendment, and successfully solving the most complex 
and fundamental industrial problems which had ever confronted the 
American people.”— Horace Stern, on Judge Miller, 6 Gt. Am. Lawyers, 58S. 

“HIGH ON INJUNCTIONS” 

A young lawyer who applied to Judge Miller, in the United States 
Circuit, for an injunction, to establish the right to a restraining order, 
was reading from “High on injunctions.” When the Judge, stopping 
him, asked: “Young man, what are you reading from?” The attornej" 
answered, “From ‘High on Injunctions.’ ” “Well,” said the Judge, 
“you needn’t read any further. I was making law before the author 
of that book was born.” 

“TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK” 

“Tell me what you tliink about this, for I esteem your opinion of much 
more value than that of the authority cited.” Said the Judge to a lawyer 
who was citing the opinion of an inferior court. 

“NO MAN HIGHER THAN THE LAW” 

“No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer 
of the law may set that law in defiance with impunity. All the officers 
of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the 
law, and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our 
system of government, and every man who by accepting office partici¬ 
pates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that 
supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the 
exercise of the authoritv which it gives.”— From opinion, in the Arlington 
cases, 106 U. S., 106 and 196 {1882). 

REASON FOR A JUDGE’S DECISION 

“1 regret to find you are in trouble about my concurrence in the recent 
decision of the Supreme Court, in regard to the sale of goods imported 
from abroad or from another State in the original packages. I venture 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


489 


to hope that I shall not wholly forfeit your esteem, because, in obedience 
to that sense of conscientious duty, which I have no doubt prompts 
you in this matter, I have felt bound to follow the decision made by this 
Court more than sixty years ago, which has never been doubted or dis¬ 
puted from that day to this. Indeed, that decision, in addition to being 
a decision of this Court, was one which fell from the lips of the greatest 
constitutional lawyer that this government ever had. It was based upon 
a construction of the Constitution of the United States. This constitu¬ 
tion has not been altered since, and the judgment of the Court has re¬ 
mained without question, from that day to this, now sixty-three years ago. 
Many people, like you, I think, have the idea that the Supreme Court 
is only bound in its decisions by the views which they may have of abstract 
moral right. But, we are as much sworn to decide according to the Con¬ 
stitution of the United States as you are bound by jmur conscience to 
a faith in the Bible, which you profess to follow.” 

—From a letter to Rev. J. P. Teter, a Methodist minister, of Oska- 
loosa, la., a personal friend, in defense of his decision in the Original 
Package Case. 


CHARLES LAMB’S OLD BENCHER 

Some lawyer has said that Charles Lamb’s description of an Old 
Bencher applies to Judge Miller: “His step was massive and elephantine, 
his face square as the lion’s, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, 
indivertible from his way as a moving column.” 


OUR ANCESTORS AND OURSELVES 


“Too many of our forefathers, it is true, deserve to be under the suspi¬ 
cion expressed by the market-man who was exhibiting his array of ‘newly- 
laid eggs, fresh eggs and plain eggs,’ to a young housekeeper, who finally 
asked: ‘Are these eggs really fresh?’ ‘Well, madam,’ he replied, ‘we 
call them Saturday night eggs; they’ve tried all the week to be good.’ 
And we are so compromising and tender in dealing with doubtful subjects 
that we follow the advice given to a man who asked how to tell a bad 
egg: ‘Well, if you have anything to tell to a bad egg you had better 
break it gently.’ Some have that kind of a conscience which Avas described 
by a small boy as ‘the thing that makes you feel sorry when you get 
found out,’ and their idea of commercial integrity was expressed by the 
man who said, proudly, ‘At last I can look the world in the face as an 
lionest man. I owe no one anything; the last claim against me is outlaAved.’ 
Some aim high, but from the result they must have shut their eyes when 
they fired, and although as a Nation we pride ourselves upon our common 
sense, so that we can truly say not every man is made a fool of, the observer 
of men and things might say, ‘every man has the raw material in him.’ 
But seriously speaking, we abate in no degree the claim that the best 
traditions of our forefathers have not degenerated in these modern days. 
Our hearts beat with a quicker throb at the recollection of the achieve¬ 
ments of these last pregnant years; the eye lights with enthusiasm at 
the sight of the flag whose fluttering folds have witnessed such scenes of 
danger and inspired such daring deeds, and our voices shout in unison 
of acclaim the achievements of what a wondering African called ‘the 


angry Saxon race.’ ” , /• at r- 

—From Speech of Judge Henry E. Howland, President of New Eng¬ 
land Society, N. Y. City, Dec. 1899. 



JAMES MONROE (1758-1831), Virginia 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

“We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing 
between the United States and those powers, to declare that we should 
consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion 
of this hemisphere as dangerous to om* peace and safety. With the existing 
colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered 
and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared 
their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, 
on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged, we could 
not view any interposition for the pmpose of oppressing them, or controll¬ 
ing in any other manner their destiny by any European power, in any 
other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards 
the United States.” 

— Lawyer, Legislator, Senator, U. S. Minister to France, Governor 
of Va. {twice), and President {the 5th) of the U. S. for eight years. 


MUSIC 

“Music expresses feeling and thought, without language. It was below 
and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. Beneath the 
waves is the sea—above the clouds is the sl^. Before man found a name 
for any thought, or thing, he had hopes and fears and passions, and these 
were rudely expressed in tones. Of one thing, however, I am certain, and 
that is, that Music was born of love. Had there never been any human 
affection,, there never could have been uttered a strain of music. Possibly 
some mother, looking in the eyes of her babe, gave the first melody to 
the enraptured air. Language is not subtle enough to express all that 
we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are 
translated into music. Music is the sunshine—the climate—of the soul, 
and it floods the heart with a perfect June. I am also satisfied that the 
greatest music is the most marvelous mingling of Love and Death. 
Love is the greatest of all passions, and Death is its shadow. Death 
gets all its terror from Love, and Love gets its intensity, its radiance, 
its glory and its rapture from the darkness of Death. Love is a flower 
and grows on the edge of the grave. The old music, for the most part, 
expresses emotion, or feeling, through time and emphasis, and what is 
known as melody. Most of the old operas consist of few melodies connect¬ 
ed by unmeaning recitative. It is as though a writer should suddenly 
leave his subject and write a paragraph consisting of nothing but a repeti¬ 
tion of one word like ‘the,’ ‘the,’ ‘the,’ or ‘if,’ ‘if,’ ‘if,’ varying the repetition 
of these words, but Avithout meaning—and then resume the subject of 
this article. * * * When I read Shakespeare, I am astonished that 

he has expressed so much Avith common words, to which he gives new 
meaning; and so when I hear Wagner, I exclaim: ‘Is it possible that all 
this is done with common air?’ ” 

— Roht. G. Ingersoll, on 'The Music of Wagner,' at a banquet in 

N. Y. City, April 2, 1891. 



JNO. T. MORGAN (1842-1907), Alabama 

THE PANTHEON OF AMERICA 

“The Pantheon of America is in the hearts of the people. I do not 
desire to see the time when we shall build a vast temple here and con¬ 
gregate in it the marble images of our great men who have preceded us. 
It is not at all necessary because the gratitude of the American heart 
keeps pace with the realization of the benefits we are deriving daily and 
hourly from the work of the great statesmen and legislators of the country. 
The people drape the noble memoirs of the men they honor in the habil¬ 
iments of light and glory, soft-hued by gratitude and love, and they 
keep in their Pantheon the undying memorials of those who have been 
true and honest in their dealings with their Avelfare. What body, or 
whose image, in marble and bronze, has ever found a nobler shrine than 
this?”— John T. Morgan, 

From an address on the Life and Character of Sam’l J. Randall, U. S. 
Senate, Sept. 13, 1890. He was a strong advocate of the Nicaragua 
Canal; a member of the Court to arbitrate the Bering Sea case; made 
and carried the burden of the Spanish War; made the case of Hawaii 
his quarrel, and it was really he that annexed the island to the U. S., 
the most musty and ancient state paper was his delight; he also read all 
the messages of the Presidents of the U. S. 

PATRIOTISM 

“Patriotism is half hid from view when we call it ‘love of country.’ 
The old Latin word from which it springs would remind us that it is a 
thing of fiesh and blood and spirit, the filial love of the fatherhood, 
the brotherly love of our countrymen, the children of the fatherhood.” 

— Jno. T. Morgan, idem. 

FRATERNITY 

“Fraternity is greater than hberty or equality, because it is their 
creator, not their creature. A restful peace makes all things possible.” 

— Jno. T. Morgan, idem. 

SAMUEL J. RANDALL 

“When about a month before the period of dissolution, Mr. Randall 
turned his thoughts in a new direction, and contemplated a new life in 
the great beyond, he acted upon convictions that moved his soul to its 
very foundation. Perhaps he had no prejudice to jdeld, perhaps no new 
line of thought to take up when he gave himself to the church of God, 
as one of his willing servants; but there was a heroism in that act which 
may be called the heroism of virtue; knowing his fate, and believing 
from his early instruction which he had received, that there was but 
one course that would lead him to safety in the future, he laid aside 
without hesitancy his connection vdth all the past, and marched confi¬ 
dently forth to take the Savior by the hand. It requires more moral 
courage to perform that act in the face of a censorious world, even when 
death is very near, than it does to fight the severest battle an American 
soldier ever engaged in.” 

—From Senator Morgan's address on the Life and Character of 

Sam'l J. Randall, U. S. Senate, Sept. 13, 1890. 


492 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


SAVOYARD ON MORGAN 

“Morgan has no doubts. He is the very definition of optimism, 
intrepidity and tenacity. Stephen A. Douglas declared that we must 
be ‘an ocean-bound republic.’ That is the doctrine of John T. Morgan. 
For twenty-four years Morgan has been a senator in Congress and it is 
not to be supposed that he has participated in the long parliamentary 
warfare and escaped scars. Even Caesar had them. David Turpie 
was a Senator from Indiana for twelve years and he had the most terril3le 
tongue since John Randolph of Roanoke left the scene. He was as polish¬ 
ed as Lamar or Sumner, could be as brutal as Hardin or Ben Butler, and 
as sardonic as Thaddeus Stevens or John J. Ingalls. His sarcasm some¬ 
times stunned like the blow of an axe, sometimes cut like the thrust of 
a stiletto, the bludgeon or the rapier were alike his weapon. The old 
fellow used to sit silent for weeks, listening ever, observing always. 
A partial paralysis of the muscles of the neck caused a constant motion 
of that enormous head filled with intellect, and he was constantly chew¬ 
ing something. It was not tobacco nor was it tulu—nobody knew what 
it was, but it was a reminder of a sheep and the cud. Certain it was that 
eye saw everything, and that mind observed everything. He was for the 
Canal, but in answer to a week’s speech of Morgan’s, he undertook to 
show that the Canal could never be constructed, and that a harbor at 
Greytown was simply out of the question, an impossibility. Fancy 
this, said in one of the most rasping voices and tantalizing manner ever 
given to man. 

“ ‘Mr. President, I thought I observed in the remarks of the honorable 
and learned Senator from Alabama the other day a tone of bitterness, 
at least acerbity, when he made the reproach against the people and the 
government of the United States, that the Isthmus will stand between 
the two oceans. Mr. President, the government of the United States 
did not put that isthmus there. It was placed there without consulting 
the government or the people of this country. * * * Almighty 

God, sir, does not require of men impossibilities, and men themselves, 
must be content with a little less dominion over the earth than the Maker.’ 

“Nobody can measure the sarcasm of that, who did not see and hear 
Turpie as he uttered it; but it was little Morgan heeded it. He could 
give blows and he could take them. Wherever and whenever a mighty 
work is to be performed, the instruments are there, fashioned by destiny 
for the labor. Elizabeth of England, William of Orange, and Henry of 
Navarre curbed the power of Spain and gave a mortal blow to a dominion 
that was not fit to be.” 

THE NUMBER OF SUPREME JUDGES UNPRESCRIBED BY 
THE CONSTITUTION 

“The number of the judges of the United States Supreme Court is 
not prescribed in the Constitution. Indeed, no reference is made to 
the question whether the Court is to be composed of one or more judges, 
except in the sixth section of the third article, in which the Chief Justice 
is required to preside over the trial of impeachment of the President of the 
United States. If it had been intended that the Supreme Court might 
be composed of a single judge, the office of Chief Justice would have 
been mentioned eo nomine” 

—Partisanship of the Supreme Court” 132 N. A. Am. Review 
176 {1881). 

AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY 

“The independence of the judiciary, when coupled with the supremacy 
of their power and the inviolability of their decrees in the field of juris- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


493 


diction assigned to them, seems almost to lift them to a height of authority 
that is too autocratic for harmonious companionship with the other 
departments of a republican government. But these high powers con¬ 
ferred upon the jumciary are the very essence of free government, 
because they are necessary to give practical force and effect to the laws 
which they themselves establish. It behooves a free people that their 
judges should be above the ‘influence of fear, favor, affection, reward, 
or the hope thereof,’ so that justice shall not be denied to the poor or 
humble man, or sold to the rich; and that it be not biased by the hope 
of favor, or the fear of giving offense to popular sentiment or political 
power,”— Idem. 

DECISIONS WHICH HAVE IMPAIRED THE COURT’S INDE¬ 
PENDENCE 

‘‘The Dred Scott decision, the Legal Tender cases, the decision of the 
Electoral Commission, and the cases construing the election laws, and 
the rights to punish State judges for obeying constitutional State statutes, 
have, in their turn, greatly impaired the confidence of many people in 
the independence of the judges of the Supreme Court.”— Idem. 

Mr. Morgan argues, in this article, that Congress should be deprived 
of the power to increase above a fixed basis, in ratable proportion to the 
increase of our population, and the number of States in the Union, or 
diminish the numl^r of judges of the Supreme Court at its pleasure. 


THE LADIES 

“Next to God, we are indebted to woman for life itself, and then for 
making it worth living. To describe her the pen should be dipped in the 
humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered 
from the wings of a butterfly. There is one in the world who feels for 
him who is sad a keener pang than he feels himself; there is one to whom 
reflected joy is better than that which comes direct; there is one who 
rejoices in another’s honor more than her own; there is one upon whom 
another’s transcendent excellence sheds no beam but that of delight; 
there is one who hides another’s infirmities more faithfully than her own; 
there is one who loses all sense of self in the sentiment of landness, tender¬ 
ness and devotion to another—that one is she who is honored with the 
holy name of wife. With the immortal Shakespeare we may say: 

“ ‘Why man, she is mine own; 

And I as rich in having such a jewel, 

As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl, 

The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.’ 

“I can do no greater justice to my subject, the occasion, and myself, 
than by closing with the words of Shelley: 

“ ‘Win her and wear her if you can. She is the most delightful of God’s 
creatures. Heaven’s best gift; man’s joy and pride in prosperity; man’s 
support and comfort in affliction. I drink her health. God bless her.’ ” 
— William B. Melish, of Cincinnati, 0., at Pittsburg, Pa., 189S at 
Banquet of Grand Encampment of Knights Templars of the U. S. 



OLIVER P. MORTON (1823-1877), Indiana 

MUST HAVE A NATION 

“We must have a nation. It is necessity of om political existence, and 
we find the countries of the Old World now aspiring for nationality. 
Italy, after a long absence, has returned. Rome has again become the 
centre and the capital of a great nation. The bleeding fragments of the 
beautiful land have been bound up together, and Italy again resumes 
her place among the nations. And we find the great Germanic faimly 
has been sighing for a nationahty. That race, whose overmastering civil¬ 
ization is acknowledged by all the world, has hitherto been divided into 
petty Principalities and States, such as Virginia and South Carolina 
aspire to be, but now are coming together and asserting their unity, 
their national existence, and are now able to dominate all the nations 
of Europe. We should then cherish this idea, that while the States have 
their rights, sacred and unapproachable, which we should guard with 
untiring vigilance, never permitting an encroachment, is as much a vio¬ 
lation of the Constitution of the U. S. as to encroach upon the rights of 
the general Governments, still bearing in mind that the States are but 
subordinate parts of one great nation is over all even as God is over the 
Universe. Without entering into any of the consequences that flow 
from this doctrine, allow me for tonight to refer to that great national 
attribute, that great national duty, the duty and the power to protect 
the citizen in the enjoyment of hfe, liberty, and property. If the Govern¬ 
ment of the U. S. has not the power to protect the citizens of the U. S. 
in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property in cases where the States 
fail, or refuse, or are unable to grant protection, then that Government 
should be amended, or should give place to a better. * * * If a mob 

in London should murder half a dozen American citizens, we would call 
upon that government to use all its power to bring the murderers to 
punishment, and if Great Britain did not do so, it would be regarded as 
a cause of war. And yet some people entertain the idea that our Govern¬ 
ment has the power to protect its citizens everywhere except upon its 
own soil. The idea that I would advocate, the doctrine that I would 
urge as being the only true and national one, flowing inevitably from 
national sovereignty, is that our government has the right to protect her 
citizens in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property wherever the flag 
floats, whether at home or abroad.” 

—On “The National Idea,” at Providence, R. I. 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

“The Democratic party is like a man riding on a train backward; 
they never see anything till they have gotten by it.” 

Graduated at Miami University; practiced law at Centerville, Ind., 
elected circuit judge in ’52; was the Great ‘War Govenor,’ during the 
Civil War; U. S. Senator in 1867; was attacked with a paralytic stroke 
in ’65, and during the remaining 12 years of his life was never able 
again to stand without support; yet was a leader of his party, one of 
the most forceful debaters in public hfe, active in reconstruction legis¬ 
lation, a leader in the Johnston impeachment, dechned under Grant the 
ministership to England, and the Chief Justiceship of the U. S.; endeavor¬ 
ed to secme a change in the method of choosing the presidents, and had 
he succeeded the Hayes-Tilden controversy would have been obviated; 
was a member of the Election Commission. 

—See Foulke’s Life of Morton, 2 vols., 1899. 


EUGENIUS ARISTIDES NISBETT (1803-1871), Georgia 

MISTAKE AND IGNORANCE OP THE LAW 

“The clear and practical difference between mistake and ignorance of 
the law, * * * been ridiculed as a quibble, but we shall 

show that it has been taken by able men and acted upon by eminent 
comts. Ignorance implies passiveness; mistake imphes action. Igno¬ 
rance does not pretend to knowledge, but mistake assumes to know. 
Ignorance may to the result of laches, which is criminal; mistake, argues 
diligence, which is commendable. Mere ignorance is no mistake, but 
mistake always involves ignorance, yet not that alone. * * * Mere 

ignorance of the law is not susceptible of proof. Proof cannot reach 
the convictions of the mind undeveloped in action; whereas, a mistake 
of the law developed in overt act is capable of proof like other facts. 
* * * No man can be excused upon a plea of ignorance of the law, for 

disobeying its injunctions or violating its provisions, or abiding his just 
contracts. He is presumed to know the law, and if he does not know it, 
he is equally presumed to be dehnquent. The principle is of universal 
application in criminal cases. In civil matters it ought not to be used to 
effectuate a wrong. That is to say, it cannot be a sufficient response 
to the claim of an injured person that he has been injured by his own 
mistake of the law, when the respondent, against conscience, is the 
holder of an advantage resulting from that mistake. The meaning, 
then, of the maxim is that no man can shelter himself from the punish¬ 
ment due to crime, or excuse a wrong done to, or a right withheld from 
another, under a plea of ignorance of the law. The maxim contemplates 
the punishment of crime, the redress of wrong, and the protection of right. 
It is reasonable so to construe it, as to apply it to one who has not only 
done no wrong, and withheld no right, but is himself the injured party, 
as in this case.” 

He was a native of Georgia, and was Judge of its Supreme Court, 
from 1845 to 1853. Says Joseph R. Lamar: “His opinions illumne the 
mind, and both instruct and convince the reader. The student is impress¬ 
ed, not only with the fact that the writer was a great man, but also that 
he was a great man.”— k Great American Lawyers, 361. 


WASHINGTON 

“You claim Washington for Virginia, but I speak the universal language 
when I repeat the eloquent expression of the most eloquent Irishman: 
‘No Country can claim, no age appropriate him; the boon of Providence 
to the human race, his fame is eternity and his residence creation.’ 
Well was it that the English subject could say though it was the defeat 
of their armies and the disgrace of their policy—even they could not 
bless the convulsion in which he had his origin, ‘for if the heavens thundered 
and the earth rocked yet when the storm had passed how pure was the 
atmosphere it cleared, how bright in the brow of the firmament was the 
planet it revealed to earth.’ A hundred years have passed since Wash¬ 
ington, crowned with the honors of the successful chieftain, having led 
his country through the turmoil of seven years of blood and strife, in 
these streets and under these skies was crowned with the highest civic 
triumph this Republic can bestow upon its citizen.” 

—John R. Fellows of N. Y. City, of the N. Y. Southern Society, 
N. Y. City, Feb. 22, 1889. 



JOHN HENRY NORTH (1789-1831), Ireland 

PROSECUTIONS AND CONVICTIONS 

“Prosecutions and convictions, the halter and the prison-bar, are 
but coarse instruments of conciliation. It is with this as with other 
virtues of the same family; friendship and affection, reciprocal esteem 
and mutual forebearance. It possesses that attribute which Shake¬ 
speare has ascribed to the quality of mercy: Tt is not strained.’ It vdll 
not be commanded. A king may place his throne upon the sands, and 
tell the stormy wave to roll back at his bidding; but whether it be the 
swelhng tide of popular emotion, or the bursting billows of the tempestuous 
sea, they will equally teach him the littleness of all mortal power, and the 
impassable limits which nature has prescribed to the authority of man. 
Do not for a moment suppose that I mean any bold and disrespectful 
allusion to the parting injunctions of his majesty. I remember too well— 
who amongst us does not remember that great and ever-memorable day, 
when the King made his triumphal entry into this city? When the 
hearts of this mighty population beat together in loyal unison as if 
it had been of one individual man, and the monarch was received 
among his people like a father into the bosom of his family? * * * 

“To what enchanting prospects did we then surrender our dehghtful 
imagination! Why have these blissful hopes been thus severely dis¬ 
appointed? It is not because the great absurdity has been attempted of 
conciliating men by force of producing, by constraint and violence, that 
which is the natural offspring of persuasion. Hence what we have seen; 
hence unfounded committals upon capital charges, refusal of bail and 
mainprise, the solemn verdicts of grand juries slighted, scorned and set 
at defiance; hence officio informations. Do not be persuaded, therfore, 
gentlemen of the jury, that any verdict which you can pronounce will 
advance the cause of conciliation; believe it not. You can find no con¬ 
ciliatory verdict, but you may find a righteous one. The Lord Lieutenant 
has been deceived and abused; your verdict may undeceive and disabuse 
liim. His noble mind has been practiced upon: he has been taught to 
believe that he is surrounded by conspirators and traitors; that weapons 
are raised against his life; he has been inducted to bear his manly breast 
and to desire ‘the assassin, if not yet disarmed, to strike now.’ Tell 
him by your verdict, gentlemen, that he has no conspirators to fear; 
that he has no assassins to dread; that there is no dagger aimed at his 
life but the ‘air-drawn dagger’ of his own imagination. Such a verdict 
as tliis may not be conciliatory, but in my heart I believe it will be just; 
it will be one that to the latest hour of your lives will receive the appro¬ 
bation of your ovm consciences; it is one already anticipated by every 
thinking and reflecting man in the community; and at no distant period 
it Avill be hailed by the whole country.’’ 

—For the defense in Rex v. Forbes, et al. Conspiracy and Riot. 
Fn Court of King's Bench, Dublin, 1823. The jury disagreed. 
North became a judge of the Admiralty in 1830. His character for 
oratory was very high, and his legal acumen great. 


RICHARD OLNEY (1835-1917), Massachusetts 

MODIFICATION OF MONROE DOCTRINE 

“ ‘fteparedness’ for defensive war is demanded by the country notwith¬ 
standing the immense burdens it entails. It involves many besides 
strictly military problems, and among them one of the most serious is 
for what contingencies we are to prepare and for what causes we are to 
be ready to tight. Shall we preserve unchanged our traditional attitude 
as the champion of every American state against foreign aggression with¬ 
out regard to its consent or request or its preference to take care of itself 
or to seek some other ally than the United States, and without regard 
to the surely incurred hostility of the aggressive foreign Power? It has 
often been claimed, and sometimes effectively asserted, that the United 
States in its own interest and for its own welfare must firmly resist any 
surrender of independence or cession of territory by an American state 
to a foreign power even if the same be entirely voluntary. Suppose, 
for example, that an American state undertakes to permit an oversea 
power to plant a colony on its soil, or to convey to it a port or a coaling 
station, is the United States to resort to war, if necessary, in order to 
defeat the scheme? These are only some of the injuries which go to show 
the necessity of a speedy and comprehensive revision of our Latin- 
American policy. The replies to them involve possibilities which must 
be taken into account in any intelligent estimate of the kind and measure 
of military ‘preparedness.’ Obviously our ‘preparedness’ means one thing 
mth the co-operation of Latin-America secured through the American 
Concert suggested, and a wholly different and much more difficult and 
burdensome thing without some co-operation. The difficulties of aiTang- 
ing such co-operation are not to be underrated. Yet the exigencies of 
the situation are apparent and threaten not merely the United States 
but all American states. It is matter of self-preservation for each, and 
each should realize the vital interest it has in supporting a Concert is 
formed on fines broad enough to cover all measures essential to the security 
of all, which is wholly defensive in nature, and which carefully abstains 
from any unnecessary impairment of the sovereignity of each.” 

—Richard Olney, ^'Our Latin-American Policy," Feb. 1916, North- 

American Review, p. 185, vol. 203, No. 273. 

U. S. SOVEREIGN ON THIS CONTINENT 

“The United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its 
fiat is law.” 

—Richard Olney, as Sec. of State, as to Venezuelan dispute, of 1895. 


DEMOSTHENES ON WHAT LAWS ARE 

“The design and object of laws is to ascertain what is just, honorable 
and expedient; and when that is discovered, it is proclaimed as a general 
ordinance, equal and impartial to all. This is the origin of law, which 
for various reasons all are under an obligation to obey, but especially 
because all law is the invention and gift of Heaven, the sentiment of wise 
men, the correction of every offence, and the general compact of the 
State; to five in conformity with which is the duty of every individual 
in society.” 



DANIEL O'CONNELL (1775-1847), Ireland 


LORD BROUGHAM 

“It was sarcastically said of Lord Brougham when he was chancellor 
of England, that if he had only known a httle law, he would have known 
a little of everything,”— Daniel 0^Connell. 

BIGOTRY 

“Bigotry has no head, and cannot think, no heart and carniot feel. 
When she moves, it is in wrath; when she pauses it is adnudst ruin; 
her prayers are curses, her God is a demon, her communion is death,” 
—Daniel O’Connell. 

SUCCESS WITH JURIES 

“Mr, O’Connell’s success with juries, whether in criminal or at nisi 
prius cases, was very great. His business on circuit was so great that 
except in very important cases he could not read the prisoner’s briefs. 
But the attorney for the defense used to condense the leading facts and 
set them down on a single sheet of foolscap, and O’Connell usually 
found time to peruse and master them, during the speech of the Crown 
counsel for the prosecution, relying on his own skill in the cross-examina¬ 
tion of witnesses, and his power over the jury. He was high in every 
branch of the profession.”— 1 Shiel’s Sketches of the Irish Bar, S5-60. 


OF GREAT PHISIQUE, AND HARD WORKER 

“He was a man of lofty stature, strong build, general good health, 
and accustomed to a great deal of exercise. He was an indefatigable worker, 
rising in the morning at daybreak. From 1815 to 1831, when he left the 
bar, his professional income averaged from $30,000 to $40,000 a year. 
He was beyond all doubt the best general lawyer in Ireland. He was 
offered and dechned a seat on the judicial bench, as Master of the Rolls 
in Ireland.”— 1 Shiel’s Sketches, 76, note. 

DESCRIPTION OP, AS A LAWYER 

“As a professional man O’Connell, perhaps, for general business 
was the most competent advocate at the Irish bar. Every requisite for 
a barrister of aU work is combined in him; some in perfection, all in 
sufficiency. He is not understood to be a deep, scientific lawyer. He 
is what is far better for himself and his clients, an admirably practical 
one. He is a thorough adept in all the compheated and fantastic forms 
which justice, like a Chinese monarch, insists that her votaries shall 
approach her, A suitor advancing her throne cannot go through the 
evolutions of the indispensable ko-tou under a more skillful master of 
ceremonies. In this department of his profession, the knowledge of the 
practice of the courts, and a perfect famiharity with the general principles 
of law that are applicable to questions discussed in open court, O’Connell 
is on a level with the most experienced of his competitors; and with few 
exceptions, perhaps, with the single exception of Mr. Plunket, he surpasses 
them all in the vehement and pertinacious talent with which he contends 
to the last victory, where victory is impossible, for an honest retreat. 
If his mind had been duly disciplined, he would have been a first rate 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


499 


reasoner and a most formidable sophist. He has all the requisites from 
nature, singular clearness, promptitude, and acuteness. When occasion 
requires, he evinces a metaphysical subtlety of perception which nothing 
can elude. The most slippery distinction that glides across him, he can 
grasp and hold "'presses manubus,^ until he pleases to set it free. But his 
argumentative powers lose much of their effect from want of arrange¬ 
ment. His thoughts have too much of the impatience of conscious strength 
to submit to an orderly disposition. Instead of moving to the con¬ 
flict in compact array, they rush forward like a tumultuary insurgent 
mass, josthng and overturning one another in the confusion of the 
charge; and though finally beating down all opposition by sheer strength 
and numbers, still reminding us of the far greater things they might 
have achieved had they been better drilled.” 

—1 ShieVs Sketches, etc., 81-2. 

AN AMBULATORY RIOT 

‘‘O’Connell is in himself an ambulatory riot, who dashes into a legal 
affray with the spirit of a bludgeoned hero of a fair, determined to knock 
down every friend of foe he meets, ‘for the honor of Old Ireland.’ ” 

—1 ShieVs Sketches, etc., 24-4^. 

HIS ATTACK ON DISRAELI 

A good illustration of his style of attack is fiurnished by the furious alter¬ 
cation between O’Connell and Disraeli, when the latter turned Tory, 
and was pronounced by O’Connell as “one who, if his genealogy could 
be traced, would be found to be the hneal descendant and true heir-at- 
law of the impenitent thief who atoned for his crimes upon the cross.” 

HIS MANNER IN SPEAKING 

“His gesticulation was redundant, never commonplace, strictly sui 
generis, far from being awkward, not precisely graceful, and yet it could 
hardly have been more forcible, and, so to speak, illustrative. He threw 
himself into a great variety of attitudes, and evidently unpremeditated. 
Now he stands bolt upright, like a grenadier. Then he assumes the port 
and bearing of a pugihst. Now he holds his arms upon his breast, utters 
some beautiful sentiment, relaxes them, recedes a step, and gives Ws wing 
the corruscations of his fancy, while a winning smile plays over his coun¬ 
tenance. Then he stands at ease, and relates an anecdote with the rollick¬ 
ing air of a horse-jockey at a Donneybrook fair. Quick as thought, his 
indignation is kindled, and, before speaking a word, he makes a violent 
sweep with his arm, seizes his wig as if he would tear it in pieces, adjusts 
it to its place, throws his body into the attitude of a gladiator, and pours 
out a flood of rebuke and denunciation.” 

— W'M. Matthews, ""Oratory and Orators," 297-8. 

JUDGE DIDN’T APPREHEND HIM 

“When O’Connell, while conducting a case before Lord Norbury, 
observed, ‘Pardon, my lord, I am afraid your lordship does not apprehend 
me,’ the Chief Justice (alluding to a report that O’Connell had avoided 
a duel with Sir Robert Peel, by surrendering himself to the pohce) retorted, 
‘Pardon me also; no one is more easily apprehended than O’Connell, 
whenever he wishes to be apprehended.’ ” 

— Heard's Curiosities of the Law, p. 54! a,lso Hamilton's Life of 
O'Connell, 55. 


500 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


GRATTAN COMPARED TO HIMSELF 

“Grattan sat the cradle of liis country, and followed her hearse; 
it was left for me to sound the resurrection trumpet, and to show that 
she was not dead, but sleeping,”— Said by O'Connell. 

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON 

“The Duke of Wellington is a stunted corporal.” 

AN OPPONENT 

“He is a mighty big liar, a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief; 
or a titled buffoon; or a contumelious cur; or a pig, or a scorpion, or an 
indescribable wretch.” 

AN ACT OP PARLIAMENT 

“I can di'ive a coach and six tlirough any act of Parliament.” 

—Alluding to the loose construction of the language. 

A CATHOLIC, BUT NOT A PAPIST 

“I am a Catholic, but not a Papist.” 

CARLYLE ON O’CONNELL 

“Thos. Carlyle never hked O’Connell, whom he heard in 1848, when 
on a visit to Ireland, and he characterized him as ‘a lying scoundrel, 
the Demosthenes of blarney; a master of Irish balderdash.’ ” 

NOT A DEMAGOGUE 

“He has been called a demagogue. If by a demagogue is understood 
a man who is merely an adept in mob-oratory, whose life is spent in pan¬ 
dering to the passions of the populace, in following and interpreting 
their follies, and in advocating the extreme opinions they delight in, it 
is quite true that such a character is a contemptible one, but equally true 
that it does not apply to O’Connell. The truth is, that the position of 
O’Connell, so far from being a common one, is absolutely unique in history. 
There have been many greater men, but there is no one with whom he 
compares disadvantageously, for he stands alone in his sphere. We may 
search in vain through the records of the past for a man who, without 
the effusion of a drop of blood, or the advantages of office or rank, succeed¬ 
ed in governing a people so absolutely and so long. And creating so en¬ 
tirely the elements of his power. A king without rebellion, with his 
tribute, his government, and his deputies, he at once evaded the meshes 
of the law and restrained-the passions of the people. He possessed also 
the eloquence and the adroitness of a demagogue, but he possessed also 
the sagacity of a statesman and not a little of the independence of a 
patriot.”— Leckey's '^Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,” S98. 

AS A LAWYER 

“There liave been a few lawyers of deeper knowledge, and even of more 
powerful eloquence, though he ranked extremely high in both respects; 
but never, perhaps, was there a man more admirably calculated to excel 
at the Irish bar. His unrivalled knowledge of the Irish character; his 
sagacity in detecting the weaknesses of the judges, jiu*ymen and witnesses; 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


501 


the wonderful dexterity with wliich he could avail himself of any legal 
quibble or ambiguity; and the unblushing audacity with which he could 
confront an opponent, enabled him quicMy to distance all competitors. 
* * * The principal success of O’Connell at the Bar was, not in 

oratory, but in cross-examining. His wonderful insight into character, 
and tact in managing different temperaments, enabled him to unravel 
the intracacies of deceit with a rapidity and a certainty that seemed 
miraculous.”— Lecky’s ‘'Leaders of Public Opinion^' etc., 231-Jf. 

HIS ORATORY 

“Had O’Connell been a man of second-rate talent he would have 
imitated some of the great orators who adorned the Irish Parliament; 
he would have studied epigram like Grattan, or irony like Plunket, or 
polished declamation like Curran. * * * He possessed a voice of 

almost unexampled perfection. Rising from an easy and melodious 
swell, it filled the largest building and triumphed over the v/ildest tumult, 
while at the same time it conveyed every inflection of feeling with the 
most delicate flexibility.”— Leckys “Leaders of Public Opinion,” etc., 238. 

THREE IMPORTANT MEASURES 

“Perhaps the three most important Parliamentary measures of the 
present century are the Emancipation of the Catholics, the Reform 
Bill of 1832, and the Establishment of Free Trade in Corn. The first 
was chiefly due to O’Connell. On one of the most important divisions 
in the first Parhament of William IV, his followers turned the balance 
in favor of the second. He was an early and strenuous advocate of the 
third.”— Ijecky's “Leaders of Piiblic Opinion,” etc., 278. 

WHAT HE DID FOR IRELAND 

“He emancipated Ireland in 1829 from the leadership of the landlords, 
but failed in his movements for repeal, which would have given Ireland 
local self-government. But no man ever retained so commanding a 
position in Ireland for nearly so long a period. For five and thirty years 
he was so much the first man of his country, that in the eyes of the world 
he stood for Ireland. * * * jf pggj ^^s pre-eminent as a member of 
Parliament, O’Connell was one of the greatest men of business. He was, 
indeed, a man with the defects of his qualities, impulsive, pugnacious, 
masterful. But he was, too, a man, of whom Ireland and the United 
Kingdom have cause to be proud; great as an orator, gi'eat as a politician, 
and, as a man, amiable and upright. It was his fate to have little scope 
for the statesmanship of constructive policy; to find his great success 
balanced by great failure; to die with so dark a cloud hanging over the 
country (famine in Ireland) he loved so well. But he served her well and 
he still lives in her affection, and this is his best reward.” 

— Hamilton’s Life of 0’Connell, 218-19. • 

NEVER SACRIFICED VERDICT TO ORATORY 

“Ah, a speech is a fine thing, but the verdict is the great tiling.” 

SPEECHES UNPREPARED 

“I never write out any discourse beforehand, nor could I do it without 
utterly cramping the force and nerve of the very limited talent I possess. ’ ’ 
—Extract from letter refusing to defend the “Lyons' Conspirators,” 
in Paris, 1835, because, though he could speak French, said not 
fluently enough. — Hamilton’s Life, 202. 


502 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


LUSTY THOUGHTS 

“O’Connell brings forth a brood of lusty thoughts without a rag to 
cover them .”—Said Richard Shiel. 

GRATTAN ON HIS STYLE AND THOUGHT 

“His speaking is extravagant diction. * * * His Hberty is not 

liberal, his politics are not reason, his reason is not learning, his learning 
is not knowledge; Ms rhetoric is a gaudy hyperbole, garnished with faded 
flowers, such as a drabbled girl would pick up in Covent Garden, stuck in 
with the taste of a Mtchen-maid. He makes politics a trade, and even 
when the filthy slaverer has exhausted its poison and returns to its kennel, 
it there still howls and barks within unseen.” To the CathoKcs of Ireland, 
speaking of writing of the “Secnrities” Controversy.— Hamilton'’s Life, 210. 

COMMITTER OF CRIME, HELPS ENEMY 

“Remember he that commits crime helps the enemy.” 

THE PEASANTS HIS INSTRUMENT 

“I will forge these four millions of Irish hearts into a thunder-bolt 
wMch shall suffice to dash this despotism to pieces.” 

TRUTH 

“The whole truth can never do harm to the whole of virtue.” 
POLITICS AND MORALS 

“Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.” 

AGAINST SLAVERY IN AMERICA 

“I send my voice across the Altantic, careering like the thunder¬ 
storm against the breeze, to tell the slave holders of the Carolinas that 
God’s thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the bondman that the dawn 
of his redemption is already breaking.” Said Wendell Phillips, who 
heard this sentence, “You seemed to hear the tones come echoing back 
to London from the Rocky Mountains.” 

WENDELL PHILLIPS ON O’CONNELL 

“The cause of constitutional government owes more to O’Connell 
than to any other pohtical leader of the last two centuries. The English- 
speaking race, to find Ms equal among its statesmen, must pass by Chatham 
and Walpole, and go back to Oliver Cromwell, or the able men who held 
the throne of Queen Elizabeth. I am ready to affirm that he was, all 
things considered, the greatest man the Irish race ever produced. A 
gentleman from Boston went to him with a letter of introduction, wMch 
he sent up to him at Ms house in Merrion Square. O’Connell came 
down to the door, as was Ms wont, put out Ms hands, and drew Mm into 
Ms library. ‘I am glad to see you,’ said he, ‘I am always glad to see 
anybody from Massachusetts, a free State.’ ‘But,’ said Ms guest, ‘tMs 
is slavery you allude to Mr. O’Connell? I would like to say a word to you 
in justification of that institution.’ ‘Very well, sir, free speech in tMs 
house; say anytMng you please. But before you begin to defend a man’s 
right to own Ms brother, allow me to step out and lock up my spoons.’ 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


503 


•I remember the solemnitj^ of Webster, the ^ace of Everett, the rhetoric 
of Choate; I know eloquence that lay hid in the iron logic of Calhoun; 
I have melted beneath the magnetism of Sergeant S. Prentiss, of Missis¬ 
sippi, who weilded a power few men ever had. It has been my good fortune 
to sit at the feet of the great speakers of the Enghsh tongue on the other 
side of the ocean. But I think all of them together never surpassed, and 
none of them ever equaled O’Connell. I saw him at over sixty-six years 
of age, every attitude was beauty, every gesture, grace. You could only 
think of a grayhound as you looked at him; it would have been delicious 
to have watched him, if he had not spoken a word. Then he had a voice 
that covered the gamut. The majesty of his indignation, fitly uttered 
in tones of superhuman power, made him able to ‘indict’ a nation, in 
spite of Burke’s protest. 

“Bulwer was led to compose the following lines on his eloquence: 

“ ‘Once to my sight that giant form was given, 

Walled by wide air, and roofed by beamless heaven. 
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, 

And wave on wave rolled into space away. 

Methought no clarion could have sent its sound 
Even to the center of the hosts around; 

And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, 

As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell, 

Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide 
It glided, easy as a bird may glide; 

Even to the verge of that vast audience sent, 

It played with each wild passion as it went. 

Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled. 

And sobs or laughter answered as it willed.’ ” 

—From Wendell Phillips' lecture on O' Connell. 

ANECDOTE OF HIS STANDING AT 54 

“In 1829, when O’Connell, then fifty-four, was resting at Darrynane 
the ‘Donraile Conspiracy’ was on for trial. A first batch was tried by 
a special commission at Cork, consisting of Baron Pennefather and Mr. 
Justice Torrens. Dogherty, the Sohcitor-General, was for the prosecutors. 
This was the year after the innocent conflict which won the Emancipation 
battle, and O’Connell had declined to defend the prisoners. The first 
four were convicted. Their friends were filled with panic: in such a 
result they had been unable to believe. O’Connell, and O’Connell alone, 
could save the rest. A farmer named William Burke was dispatched 
posthaste to Darrynane, ninety miles away. Traveling to Kerry was 
still slow and difficult. The first four-horse mail from Cork into Kerry 
had only been run in August, 1810; the Limerick mail-coach was a 
thing of but four years’ standing. About thirty years before, 
O’Connell had been fom' days in getting from Darrynane to Limerick, 
and until 1839 there was a portion of the road to Darrynane, 
five miles long, so insecure the rough conveyances of the country dragged 
with ropes by men. Burke arrived early on a Sunday morning, and told 
O’Connell his tale. The counsellor said he would come to the rescue. 
With only two hours’ rest, Burke set out again for Cork, to prepare 
relays of horses along the road, and raise the spirits of the prisoners and 
their friends. O’Connell set off and drove himself in a chaise all that day 
and all the night. At Macroom he snatched three or four hours’ sleep, 
and at daybreak he pushed on. The court was to sit at nine; the judges 
had refused to delay the trial for O’Connell’s arrival. All Cork was 
grieving with anxiety; would the counsellor be there in time? At length 
the watchers descried him dashing along the Kerry road and lashing 
his horse as he came. The cheer that went up from thousands of throats 


504 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


broke in upon the Solicitor-General’s opening speech. Pushing through 
the crowd, O’Connell pulled up at the comt; his horse fell dead in the 
shafts. As he entered the court, Dogherty turned white, and the prisoners 
dared to hope. Apologizing to the bench, O’Connell took his seat, and 
snatching a hasty breakfast of milk and bread as he sat in his place, 
plunged into the case. The Crown witnesses were not prepared to face 
him. He browbeat the Solicitor-General, mimicked his pronunciation, 
and sneered at his law. Though the evidence was the same as that which 
had convicted the first batch, the jury, under the influence of O’Connell’s 
ascendancy, disagreed as to the second, and acquitted the third. No 
wonder that he lived in the hearts of the Munster men, who had so often 
seen their friends and relatives saved by his skill. The Irish peasants, 
who gave to O’Connell th^ ough a quarter of a century an affection and 
obedience which they have never given to any other leader, always 
loved better than all Ms titles the name of ‘The Counsellor.’ ” 

— Hamilton's ‘^Life of O'ConnelU" Jf.-16. 

REPORT TO BARON McCLELLAN 

“During the motion for a new trial, counsel called on a young lawyer 
of Kerry, who was attorney on the other side, to produce some document 
or make some admission. O’Connell, who chanced to be in court, but 
for aught that appeared, knew nothing whatever of the rights or wrongs 
of the case, and had nothing to do \vith it, stood up in court and told 
the attorney to refuse. Baron McClellan, one of the Judges on the bench, 
asked him if he had a brief in the case. ‘No, my lord,’ said O’Connell, 
‘I have not, but I vdll have when the case goes down to the assizes.’ 
‘When I was at the bar,’ said the Judge, ‘it was not my habit to antici¬ 
pate briefs.’ ‘When you were at the bar,’ retorted O’Connell. ‘I never 
chose you for a model, and now that you are on the bench, I shall not 
submit to your dictation.’ ’’ — Hamilton's Life of O'Connell, 18, 19. 

ON REPEAL OF THE UNION 

“We are standing upon Tara of the Kings; that spot where the monarchs 
of Ireland were elected, and where the chieftains of Ireland bound them¬ 
selves by the most solemn pledges of honor to protect their native land 
against the Dane and every stranger. This was emphatically the spot 
from wMch emanated every social power and legal authority by which 
the force of the entire country was concentrated for the purposes of 
national defense. On tMs spot I have a most important duty to perform. 

I here protest, and in the name of my country and in the name of my 
God, against the unfounded and unjust Union. My proposition to 
Ireland is that the Union is not binding on her people. It is void in 
conscience and in principle, and as a matter of constitutional law I attest 
these facts. Yes, I attest by everytMng that is sacred, without being 
profane, the truth of my assertions. There is no real union between the 
two countries, and my proposition is that there was no authority given 
to anyone to pass the Act of Union. Neither the English nor the Irish 
Legislature was competent to pass that act, and I arraign it on these 
grounds. One authority alone could make that Act binding, and that 
was the voice of the people of Ireland. The Irish Parliament was elected 
to make laws, and not to make Legislatures; and, therefore, it had no 
right to assume the authority to pass the Act of Union. The Irish 
Parliament was elected by the Irish people as their trustees; the people 
were their masters, and the members were their servants, and had no right 
to transfer the property to anj^ other power of legislation to the French 
Chamber, would any man assert that the Act was valid? Would any 
man be insane enough to assert it, and would the insanity of the assertion 
be mitigated by sending any member or members to the French Chamber ? 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


505 


Everybody must admit that it would not. What care I for France? 
And I care as little for England as for Prance, for both countries are 
foreign to me. The very highest authority in England has proclaimed 
us to be aliens in blood, in religion, and in language. To show the inval¬ 
idity of the Union, I will only quote the declaration of Lord Plunket 
in the Irish Parhament, who told them that they had no authority to 
transfer the legislation of the country to other hands. As well, said he, 
might a maniac imagine that the blow by which he destroys his wretched 
body annihilated his immortal soul, as you imagine that you can annihi¬ 
late the soul of Ireland, her constitutional rights. 

“I, therefore, proclaim the nullity of the Union. In the face of Europe 
I proclaim its nulhty. In the face of France and of Spain, I proclaim its 
nullity; and I proclaim its nulhty in the face of the liberated States of 
America. I go farther, I proclaim its nullity on the grounds of the in¬ 
iquitous means by which it was carried. It was effected by the most 
flagrant fraud. A rebelhon might have a pretext for crushing the liber¬ 
ties of Ireland. There Ireland had no legal protection. The habeas 
corpus act was suspended and the lives and liberties of the people were 
at the mercy of martial law. The next fraud was that the Irish people 
were not alloAved to meet to remonstrate against it. In King’s County the 
High Sheriff called the people together in the court-house and Colonel 
Connor, of the North Cork militia, supported the artillery and a troop 
of horse entered the court-house at the head of two hundred of his regi¬ 
ment, and turned out the sheriff, magistrates, grand-jurors, and free¬ 
holders assembled to petition against the enactment of the Union. 

“In Tipperary a similar scene took place, a meeting convened by the 
High Sheriff was dispersed at the point of the bayonet. Thus public 
sentiment was stifled; and if there was a compact, as is alleged, it is void, 
on account of the fraud and force by which it was carried. 

“My next impeachment against the Union is the gross corruption with 
which it was carried, no less than 1,275,000 pounds was spent upon the 
rotten boroughs, and 2,000,000 given in direct bribery. There was not 
one office that was not made instrumental to the carrying of the measure. 
Six to seven judges were raised to the bench for the votes they gave in 
its support; and no less than twelve bishops were elevated to the Episcopal 
bench for having taken the side of the Union; for corruption then spared 
nothing to effect its purpose, corruption was never carried so far; and if 
this is to be binding on the Irish nation there is no use in honesty at all. 

“My next impeachment of the Union is its destructive and deleterious 
effect upon the industry and prosperity of the country. The County of 
Meath was once studded with noble residences. What is it now? You 
remember the once prosperous linen-weavers of Meath. There is scarcely 
a penny paid to them now. In short, the Union struck down the manu¬ 
facturers of Ireland. The Commissioners of the Poor Law prove that 
120,000 persons in Ireland are in a state of destruction during the greater 
part of each year. How is it that in one of the most fertile countries of 
the world this should occur? But the Union is more a nullity on eccles¬ 
iastical grounds; for why should the great majority of the people of 
Ireland pay for the support of a religion which they do not believe to 
be true ? The Union was carried by the most abominable corruption apd 
bribery, by financial robbery on an extensive scale, which makes it the 
more heinous and oppressive; and the result is that Ireland is saddled 
with an unjust debt, her commerce is taken from her, her trade is de¬ 
stroyed, and a large number of her people are thus reduced to misery and 
distress 

“On the 2nd of January last I called this the Repeal year, I was laughed 
at for doing so. Are they laughing now? No; it is now my turn to laugh; 
and I will now say that in twelve months we will have our Parliament 
again on College Green. The Green has the undoubted prerogative at 
any time to order her ministers to issue writs, which being signed by the 


506 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Lord Chancellor, the Irish Parliament would at once be convened without 
the necessity of applying to the English Legislature to repeal what they 
appear to consider a valid Act of Union. And if Sugden would not sign 
the writ, an Irish Chancellor would soon be found who would do so. 
And, if we have our Parhament again in Dublin, is there, I would ask, 
a coward amongst you who would not rather die than allow it to be taken 
away by an Act of Union? Let every man who would not let the Act 
of Union to pass hold up his hand. When the Irish Parliament is again 
assembled, I will defy any power on earth to take it from us again. Your 
shouts are almost enough to call to life those who rest in the grave. 
T can almost fancy the spirits of the mighty dead hovering over you, and 
the ancient kings and chiefs of Ireland from the clouds listening to the 
shouts sent up from Tara for Irish hberty! Your cheers will penetrate 
to the extremity of civihzation. Our movement is the admiration of the 
world, for no other country can show so much force with so much propriety 
of conduct. No other country can show a people assembled for the highest 
national purposes than can actuate man; can show hundreds of thousands 
able in strength to carry any battle that ever was fought, and yet separat¬ 
ing with the tranquility of school-boys. You have stood by me long; 
stand by me a little longer, and Ireland will be again a Nation!” 

— This speech was probably made to the largest political gathering 
in the history of the world, on the Hill of Tara, Aug. 15, 184-3. It 
is estimated that not less than a quarter of a million persons were 
present. They came from all parts of Ireland, under the guidance 
of their parish priests, to hear the great orator. 


DISLIKED SIR ROBERT PEEL 

O’Connell disliked Sir Robert Peel, because of the latter’s opposition 
to his taking a seat in Parliament, and said that “Peel’s smile was like 
the silver plate on a coffin.” 

EARLY PRECOCITY 

“Young O’Connell learned the whole alphabet in an hour and a half. 
He would turn over the portraits of the celebrities of the Dubhn Magazine, 
saying, ‘I wonder will my visage ever appear in the Dublin Magazine ?’ 
He composed a drama on the fortunes of the House of Stuart at ten years 
of age; and so fond of reading was he, that he would desert his play¬ 
fellows to devour Cook’s ‘Voyages,’ and cry over its pages of adventure.” 

— Hamilton's L fe, 3. 


JUSTICE GRIER ON SPECIAL PLEADING 

‘.‘This system, matured by the wisdom of ages, founded on principles 
of truth and sound reason, has been ruthlessly abolished in many of our 
States, which have rashly substituted in its place the suggestions of scio¬ 
lists who invent new codes and systems of pleading to order. But this at¬ 
tempt to abolish all species and establish a single genus, is found to be 
beyond the power of legislative omnipotence. The result of these 
experiments, so far as they have come to our knowledge, has been to 
destroy the certainty and simplicity of all pleadings, and introduce on 
the record an endless wrangle in writing, perplexing to the court delay¬ 
ing, and impeding the administration of justice.” 

—McFaul V. Ramsey, 20 Howard, 525 {In U. S. Supreme Court). 



CHARLES O'CONOR (1804-1884), New York 

JURISPRUDENCE AND JUSTICE 


“Jurisprudence is of human origin; Justice is an attribute of Divinity, 
pre-existent of all created things, eternal and immutable. Its authority 
is not derived from any human code, either of positive institution or of 
customary reception; its decrees are found in the voice of God speaking 
to the heart which faith has purified to receive and reason, has enlightened 
with capacity to understand.” 

— Chas. O'Conor—Armstrong v. U. S. in Court of Claims, Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., '55. 


A GREAT LAWYER 

“The great lawyer is not the one who knows the most law, but under¬ 
stands what the point involved is. I have known many cases to go to 
the Court of Appeals where neither party knew what the real point was.” 

— Chas. O'Conor. 

It was the opinion of S. J. Tilden, Jno. K. Porter, John Bigelow, 
Jas. C. Carter, Wm. M. Evarts, Chas. P. Daley, Henry E. Gregory, 
H. L. Clinton, and Frederic R. Coudert that O’Conor was the greatest 
lawyer this country has ever produced, and some of them that he was the 
greatest produced in any country. 

ADMIRALTY JURISDICTION 

“That admiralty jirrisdiction could exist without the tide-water was 
an idea too novel for even the great mind of Chief Justice Marshall, 
but at last judicial wisdom, sharpened and impelled by strong necessity, 
cast aside these immaterial incidents, and, looking at the substance of 
the thing, found in the Constitution a government for our great rivers 
and inland seas.”— Chas. O'Conor (I 8 O 4 .-I 884 ), N. Y. 

, SUCCESS—UPON WHAT IT DEPENDS 

Being asked to what he chiefly attributed his success he answered. 
“Study.” 

SOME INCIDENTS OF HIS EARLY CAREER 

“O’Conor read Blackstone at thirteen years of age; tried cases in the 
Ward Courts of New York City, at eighteen; bought an old law library for 
$161, by getting his friend, George Pardow, to indorse his note (for 
which he remembered Pardow’s ^eatgranddaughter in his will more 
than fifty years afterward, by giving her 1-3 of his estate, amounting 
to $33,333,33, and also his Nantucket home, and his library there,— 
18,000 volumes); was admitted to the Supreme Court, and Court of 
Chancery at twenty-three. Said he owed most to Comyn’s Digest of 
the Laws of England, in 5 Volumes, which by close study he made his 
own—areally the most accurate abridgment of the common law that has 
ever been written.” 

—13 Magazine of Am. Hist., 522, hy Chas. P. Daly, 1885. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


508 


MADE PATHETIC APPEALS BY PROXY 

O’Conor used to say that he never could make pathetic appeals to the 
jury, even in cases where he felt most deeply; and where this was req¬ 
uisite he generally retained Ogden Hoffman, or some other eloquent 
advocate. 

O’CONOR AND NICHOLAS HILL 

“After the Court of Appeals came into existence in 1847, Nicholas 
Hill and Charles O’Conor were the two lawyers heard most frequently 
there in the argument of important cases. One of the judges was asked 
whose briefs he regarded the best, and his reply was that Hill’s were the 
fullest and most exhaustive, but O’Conor’s were the clearest. Hill was 
asked what he thought of O’Conor’s arguments before the court generally, 
and he said O’Conor does not argue his cases, he states them; which 
being communicated to Mr. O’Conor, he expressed himself highly 
gratified by this appreciative compliment.” 

— Chas. P. Daly—in 13 Am. Mag., 529. 

HIS PRACTICE AND CASES 

“His practice extended over a half century. The cases which he se¬ 
lected (out of the various ones), and had bound and left by his vill, 
to the Law Institute, alone fill 79 volumes, octavo, to which should be 
added 7 volumes of written opinions; and yet these 86 volumes extended 
only from 1849, which is a little more than half of his professional career.” 

— Chas. P. Daly — Idem, 530. 

A GENERAL LAWYER 

“The question then arises, how was it that with such competitors 
as Ogden Hoffman, Hugh Maxwell, John Duer, Jas. W. Gerard, Thos. A. 
Emmit, Benj. P. Butler, Henry M. Western, David Graham and Jas T. 
Brady—all ^eat nisi prius lawyers; Caleb Riggs to Ralph Lockwood, 
exclusive equity lawyers; Samuel A. Talcot, David B. Ogden and George 
Wood, unequaled in argument before the court in banc—how was it 
that he reached so high a position, and kept it so long? The answer 
is, that his course of training had been such that he became more of a general 
lawyer than any of his contemporaries. His business had been from the 
first of a diversified character; and as it had been his habit to investigate 
with the greatest thoroughness every case that came before him, and 
the law relating to it, he became well informed and skillful in more 
departments of the law than most lawyers. In fact, from the time he 
commenced to try causes in the Ward Courts he may be said to have 
studied the law, not by the reading of the treatises, but by learning what 
was applicable to the cases he had in hand; and as he had great powers 
of application and a most tenaceous memory, he acquired and retained 
a great amount of knowledge in every department of jurisprudence.” 

— Chas. P. Daly — Idem, 523-4-. 

HIS PURITY OF STYLE 

“President Woolsey, of Yale College, who, after reaping the highest 
honors of that college, passed four years in Germany to omplete his 
education, and was afterward made Professor of the Greek language, 
though famed for the purity of liis style in its strength and foreshortening, 
was by no means the equal of O’Conor, who was confessedly Avithout the 
advantages of a classical education (having received but six months. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


509 


tuition in a school at Barclay street, N. Y.; some instruction from his 
father, in Latin and other branches with which his father was acquainted, 
and subsequently some little instruction in French).” 

— IV. W^atson, voL 161, N. A. Review, 758. 

THE FORREST DIVORCE CASE FEE 

“O’Conor got a decree against Forrest, the actor, for $64,000, and 
charged his client, Mrs. Forrest, a fee of $40,000, retaining it from the 
decree; but claimed a large part of this was for money advanced. The 
charge created quite a scandal, as a committee of thirty N. Y. ladies, upon 
his early success in 1852, presented him with a silver vase, for his dis¬ 
interestedness, and sixty ‘disinterested lawyers’ gave him another vase 
for his meritorious and magnanimous prosecution of the actor; but 
when he made the $40,000 charge, in 1876, upon the termination of the 
litigation, there was quite a scandal about the matter, and an investi- ' 
gation by a committee of the Bar, at his suggestion, however, and which 
he demanded, completely exonerated him from anything dishonorable 
in any way.”— Irving Brown. 

$50,000 FEE IN A MINE CASE 

His fee in the Almaden Mine Case, in the U. S. Supreme Court, was 
$50,000, in a check payable in gold (and as gold at this time was worth 
250 premium, it amounted to $125,000). 

NO PARTICULAR APTITUDE FOR LAW 

O’Conor told John Bigelow that he possessed no particular aptitude 
for the law, and had no doubt that he would have met the same measure 
of success in any walk—as blacksmith, physician, or in any other calling. 

JAMES C. CARTER’S TRIBUTE 

‘‘He could have stepped into Westminster Hall and argued a special 
demurrer with success against Sergeant Williams.” 

WILLIAM M. EVARTSLESTIMATE 

‘‘He was, in my judgment and to my perception, the most accomplished 
lawyer in the learning of the profession of our Bar. Indeed, I cannot 
be mistaken in saying that he v/as entitled to pre-eminence in this province 
of learning among his contemporaries in this country, and among the 
most learned of the lawyers of any country under our system of juris¬ 
prudence.” 

JOHN BIGELOW’S ESTIMATE 

‘‘O’Conor was one of the most richly endowed barristers of this or, 
indeed, of any age.”— 1 ^^Retrospections of An Active Life,’' 78. 

JOHN K. PORTER’S OPINION 

John K. Porter regarded Alexander Hamilton, Nicholas Hill and Charles 
O’Conor as the greatest lawyers, not only of the New York Bar, but of 
the United States. 


510 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


HIS AMBITION 

“O’Conor’s main purpose, it seems, was to attain to the highest em¬ 
inence in his profession, and to prove that the son of a foreigner, without 
social position, could equal and surpass the men who had all the derived 
and fictitious advantages denied to him.” 

—5 ^'Great Am. Lawyers," 115-16. 

NOT GENERALLY CULTURED 

“Whether Mr. O’Conor’s distinction as a jurist and his usefulness as 
a public character might not have been increased had he received a classical 
or a university education, and throughout his career given more time to 
general culture, is a question that may not unnaturally be asked. It is 
safe to say, however, that such an education and pursuit of culture would 
not have enlarged or multiplied his qualifications simply and solely as 
,a lawyer. A deeper knowledge of history, literature, and philosophy, 
which by some authorities has been deemed prerequisite, and even in¬ 
dispensable to the equipment of the truly ^eat lawyer and jurist, would 
not have increased his ability to conduct trials and win cases. But such 
studies, while they might not have strengthened, would have liberalized 
his understanding and extended his intellectual horizon. They would 
have opened to him domains of opulence and beauty into which he was 
destined never to enter. He might have found more genuine satisfaction 
in his leisure hours, more refreshment and consolation, had he been able 
in the decline of life to renew an acquaintance with the master spirits 
of literature and philosophy.” 

—5 '‘Great American Lawyers " by Henry Ellsworth Gregory, 115-16. 
HABITS 

He always retired at 9 in the evening, breakfasted at 7, dined at 2, 
and suppered at 7. To this program he adhered with almost fanatical 
precision.— John Bigelow—“29 Century Magazine" (1884--5), 726. 

GREAT SPECIAL PLEADER 

“O’Conor considered himseK a very expert special pleader; he doubted 
if he had his superior in the country; he knew almost by heart every fine 
in Chitty’s elaborate treatise on ‘Pleading;’ and in speaking of a certain 
suit in which his aid had been invoked, he said he never knew a case in 
which the parties had been pleading for an issue a year that he could not 
find a defect of sufficient gravity to set their proceedings aside. He 
thought, however, that the time of a young lawyer could now be better 
employed than in trying to master the literature and art of special plead¬ 
ing.”— John Bigelow—29 Cent. Mag., 732-3. 

HIS FEES 

“He was noted always for his moderate charges, though his income was 
large. It was not his habit to ask retaining fees, nor any pay on account 
until the work was done, then receiving all in a lump. He did not regard 
this the most profitable, nor did he commend it to others; but it was 
somehow more to his taste. He worked in litigated cases sometimes for 
twenty years before receiving a cent of compensation. Usually fixed the 
price at the close, and told his clients that while he thought the sum named 
was what his services were worth, yet they might give him what they 
thought right, or felt they could afford. Said he never had his bill cut 
down but once, and that was by a very prominent citizen of N. Y. City. 
The bill was $1,000—a very moderate charge, considering the services 
rendered. The client sent him $750, with the remark that he thought 
that was about the sum he expected."—John Bigelow—29 Cent. Mag., 734. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


511 


HIS CHARITY 

“He gave an impecunious man, then living in N. Y., but a native of 
Virginia, $5 while standing in front of Delmonico’s. It was such a 
surprise to the poor fellow, who was on the verge of suicide, that he asked 
who the stranger was. He was told he was Charles O’Conor, the lawyer. 
Thirty years afterward when in his retired home at Nantucket, O’Conor 
received a check for $5, and a letter, which said as soon as able the 
sender would remit the interest for the thirty years. But the lawyer im¬ 
mediately wrote him that he had no recollection of the incident; that 
he would accept the money, for that would seem necessary to make him 
feel easy, but he must decline the interest and begged him never to 
allude to, or think of that again, as he never could, under any circum¬ 
stances, consent to accept it. 

“Again, while on his way to New York from his Nantucket home, says 
Miss Folger, who accompanied him, we had to wait some time at the 
Providence depot. I suggested that we should give some sandwiches 
we had brought with us to some children also waiting. He was dehghted, 
and insisted that I should buy some oranges to add to the attractions of 
the repast. We went into the waiting-room, spread out our things on 
one of the settees, and then invited the little ones to the feast. I cannot 
tell you Ms delight at their enjoyment and appetite, and he watched 
them until all the eatables had vanished, pacing up and down the length 
of the room meanwhile.”— John Bigelow's Recollections of O'Conor. 

HIS WEALTH 

“O’Conor’s fortune has been estimated by those in a position to know 
at $800,000. He owned 11 acres of land, with Ms town house, on Wash¬ 
ington Heights, worth from $300,000 to $400,000, and he once owned a 
house in Fifth Avenue, N. Y. City. His library of 18,000 volumes at 
Nantucket is said to have cost Mm $100,000, but it sold at auction 
sale at less than $30,000.— Irving Browne—7 Green Bag, 352. 

FREDERICK R. COUDERT’S ESTIMATE 

“Asked who was the greatest lawyer he had ever known, Coudert 
replied: ‘Charles O’Conor, Ogden Hoffman and Jas. T. Brady, each 
greatest in a certain sphere. O’Conor was greatest in a knowledge of the 
law, but he always kept a tight rein on his imagination. Hoffman was 
irresistible with a jury. Brady the most ricMy endowed of them all, 
but the impression he left was that he could do anytMng, if he only 
cared to try. 

A GREAT REASONER 

“Charles O’Conor had no more imagination or emotion than a problem 
in Euclid’s geometry; but, as in Euclid, if you granted his premises you 
could not escape his conclusions. His direct examination was so clear 
and orderly that the essentials of the witnesses’s story remained with the 
jury until the end of the trial, and the cross-examination was so keen and 
searching that a lying or prevaricating witness rarely escaped detection 
and confusion.” 

—Said hy Abbott, when practicing in N. Y. City, from 1853 to 1859. 
He further said Brady and O'Conor were the leaders at the- bar in 
jury trials. 

OUT-GENERALED BY JAS. W. GERARD 

“Gerard and O’Conor were opposed in an important ease, in wMch the 
plaintiff claimed heavy damages on the ground of fraud in a business 
transaction between Mm and the defendant. O’Conor was for plaintiff; 


512 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GRE/VT LAWYERS 


Gerard for the defendant. Fraud could only be proved by a variety 
of facts and circumstances, any one of which itself was probably not 
very strong, but combined it was claimed would prove an overwhelming 
case. Lawyers accustomed to try cases of fraud understand how the force 
and weight of the curcumstances depend upon the impressive manner 
in which they are brought out in evidence before the jury. Objection is 
often made to the admission of the evidence; the bearing of each cir¬ 
cumstance is not unfrequently discussed by opposing counsel, and its 
relevancy has to be shown before it can be admitted. In this way 
the jury become interested and get educated in regard to the plaintiff’s 
case as the trial proceeds, and the various facts and circumstances, as 
they are brought out in detail, continue to increase in importance until 
their combined force, when plaintiff rests, is sufficient to prove his case. 
In the case in question, when O’Conor produced his first witness and be¬ 
gan to examine him, Mr. Gerard, in his peculiar, quick, nervous manner, 
aros(5 and said: ‘Mr. O’Conor, what do you propose to show by this 
witness?’ Mr. O’Conor stated what he proposed to prove. Mr. Gerard 
said: ‘It is useless to waste the time of the court and jury in proving 

that, 7 admit it.’ Mr. O’C^nor called his next witness and began to 
examine him. Mr Gerard, in the same manner as before, jumped up 
and asked. O’Conor the same question—what he proposed to show by 
the witness. Mr. O’Conor, in Ins peculiar, clear and succinct manner, 
stated precisely what he expected to prove. Said Mr. Gerard—‘7 admit 
it, don’t let us waste time.’ Mr. O’Conor called his next witness, Mr. 
Gerard put to him the same question, and Mr. O’Conor, with his usual 
clearness and accuracy, stated the facts he expected to prove. Said 
Mr. Gerard: ‘I admit all you say you are going to prove. Let us hurry 
along.’ In this way, Mr. Gerard, as plaintiff’s witnesses, one after another 
were called, admitted everything that was sought to be proved by them. 
With a rapidity that almost took Mr. O’Conor’s breath away he found that 
his whole case was admitted—all his facts, which by dint of determined 
perseverance and great professional skill he had expected to get in evi¬ 
dence, were admitted wholesale. He, therefore,-rested his ease; and as 
Mr. Gerard had no evidence to give in behalf of his client, the case 
went to the jury on the evidence of the plaintiff. Of course, it was for 
the jury to construe the facts and circumstances, and determine whether 
they proved the fraud charged upon the defendant. Mr. Gerard instantly 
addressed the jury. His speech was very short, and was substantially 
as follows:— 

“Gentlemen of the jury, some of you know me personally, I have no 
doubt those of you who are not personally acquainted with me know me 
by reputation. Now, gentlemen, you bnoiv that if my client had been 
guilty of any fraud I would be the last man on earth to admit it, I would 
hide it from you, I would cover it up; I would fight, fight—and I know 
hoiv to fight—against the proof of it getting in evidence. If my client 
had been guilty of fraud, do you think I would admit it? No! No! Never! 
Never!! Never!!! (Mr Gerard here looked at his watch.) Gentlemen, 
excuse my brevity; I have an engagement to dine to-day, and my time is 
almost up, so I will detain you no longer,’’ 

Despite the able and elaborate argument of Mr. O’Conor to the jury 
he failed to impress them with the importance of the facts and circum¬ 
stances, which, through Mr. Gerard’s admissions, he had got in evidence, 
and without hesitation they rendered a verdict for the defendant.’’ 

—Henry L. Clinton—in ‘•^Extraordinary Cases,” 78-80. 

CONSCIENCE AND NATURAL LAW 

“What is contrary to conscience and contrary to that natural justice, 
with a knowledge whereof the great Father of us all has endowed every 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


513 


reasonable and intelligent member of our species, may not lawfully be 
practiced, however, sanctioned by human institutions. I hold to that 
doctrine, and in that sense I do maintain that there is a higher law— 
I vow undying allegiance.” 

• — O'Conor, in Lem mon v. the People, 20 N. Y. Rep. (1852) 
EXPERIENCE WITH AN INDIANA RAILWAY 

“O’Conor loaned a friend $25,000, secured by Indiana railroad bonds. 
He sent his claim to an Indianapolis law firm for collection. They 
reported the security was no good, and advised settlement at a large 
discount, which the railroad company would pay. He wrote: ‘Sue the 
railroad company. Put it into judgment.’ They answered that the 
mortgage had been foreclosed, and the road sold for a song. O’Conor 
insisted upon putting the matter into judgment. They again wrote: 
‘We can negotiate the bonds to officers of the company rather than have 
a suit, perhaps we can compromise it.’ He wrote back that he would 
have principal and interest or he would go West and commence suit. 
Shortly he received the full amount of his claim, with interest and costs. 
The company, doubtless, had heard of the great fighting lawyer’s staying 
qualities.”— Scott's ^Distingnised Lawyers,' 550 

O’CONOR’S TRIBUTE TO TILDEN 

“O’Conor spoke of the case in which Giles, the Know-Nothing can¬ 
didate for comptroller, attempted to set aside the election of Flagg, the 
incumbent in the year 1854. Tilden and Evarts were associated with 
O’Conor as counsel for Flagg, and James T. Brady, Ambrose L. Jordan, 
Judge Edmonds and two others, whose names were not mentioned, were 
counsel for Giles. But, said he, the case was won by Tilden. Giles had 
proved his case, and proved it completely. Then Tilden rose to open for 
Flagg. He had not a witness to produce that could testify to the merits of 
the case. Tilden spoke some time before his line of defense began to appear, 
the audience began to yawn and those especially interested for Flagg, 
to despair. After he had spoken some half hour or more, the clouds began 
to lift and the sunhght to appear. Within two minutes after the audience 
had struck his trail they were still as mice, and their attention was 
riveted upon him until he took his seat. He had been up all night pre¬ 
paring a series of tables from the taUey-hst which had been lost or stolen, 
and was thus enabled to follow, step by step, the march of his inexorable 
logic. Mr. O’Conor described the speech as ‘exquisite’. ‘It was perfect; 
it was as fine an argument as I ever heard.’ When Tilden sat down, 
the case was won. Evarts and I said a few words, but Flagg was comp¬ 
troller when Tilden finished, and nothing that any one could have said 
would have made him more or less so.” 

—John Bigelow—"‘29 Cent. Mag.," 733. 

DUTY OF DEFENSE 

“To afford even those whom impartial justice arraigns, upon credible 
evidence, a fair hearing is the first duty of our profession.” (In a letter 
when charged with defending high-handed criminals.) 

O’CONOR’S ADVICE ON READING 

A young man sent O’Conor a large list of books which he had read, and 
asked the great lawyer what others he would advise him to read. O’Conor, 
who had never read, or even heard of many of the books in the list, wrote 
his inquirer: “Read less and think more.” 


514 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 

“So far from being an advantage, the reputation of being an Irishman 
and a Catholic has been to me a serious political, social and profes¬ 
sional disadvantage.” 


SHAVE ME IN SILENCE 

When asked how he would like to be shaved by a talkative barber, 
O’Conor replied: “In silence!” 

MIGHT BE CONVICTED FOR LESS MONEY 

Conkling, asked O’Conor what he thought of the reasonableness of 
a $600 fee for trying a case in the lower court, taken to the Supreme 
Court, where he was beaten, and then to the N. Y. Court of Appeals, 
where he was finally beaten again—all of which consumed two years 
of time, and said Conkling, “when I gave my client a bill for $600, he 
thought it too much. What do you think?” 

“Well,” said O’Conor, “I think he could have been convicted for less 
money.” 

JAS. C. CARTER’S CHARACTERIZATION OF O’CONOR^ 

“I believe it would be the deliberate judgment of those who have 
enjoyed a close acquaintance with Mr. O’Conor and have frequently 
witnessed his various powers in their full activity and observed the 
prodigious extent of his acquirements, that he was, all things considered, 
the profoundest and best equipped lawyer that has ever appeared at this 
bar, and that he would not suffer in a comparison with the great lawyers 
of any nation or any time. Certainly we have never known anyone at 
all comparable with him as a draughtsman. His pleadings were beautiful 
examples of art, and in his later years, when he had more leisure, to draw 
a bill in equity or an answer was a genuine delight to him.” 

—5 Great Am. Lawyers, Art., ' 0^ Conor,' 89, note. 


EVARTS ON THE MAN WHO TALKED TO HIMSELF 

“Mr. Evarts once told me when I was talking to him at his country 
place that an old man whom he pointed out, and who was sawing wood, 
was the most sensible philosopher in the neighborhood. Mr. Evarts 
said: ‘He is always talking to himself, and I asked him why.’ His 
answer was: ‘I always talk to myself in preference to talking to anybody 
else, because I like to talk to a sensible man, and listen to a sensible man 
talk.’ ”— Chauncey M. Depew's '’Memories of 80 Years,' 106. 


LORD ELDON AND THE HANDSOME LADY 

At one time Lord Eldon was walldng arm-in-arm with a legal friend, 
through the corridors of the court house, and observing a very handsome 
lady just ahead, remarked, “What a handsome lady.” The lady over¬ 
hearing the same turned and replied, “What an excellent judge!” 




JAMES OTIS (1725-1783), Massachusetts 

WRITS OF ASSISTANCE 

“May it please your honors, I was desired by one of the court to look at 
the books, and consider the question now before them concerning writs 
of assistance. * * * I will, to my dying day, oppose with all the powers and 
faculties God has given me all such instruments of slavery on the one 
hand, and villainy on the other, as the writ of assistance is. It appears 
to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of 
Enghsh hberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was 
found in an English law book. * * * Your honors will find in the old books 
concerning the office of a justice of the peace precedents of general war¬ 
rants to search suspected houses. But in modern books, you will find only 
special warrants to search such and such houses, specially named, in 
which the complainant has before sworn that he suspects Ms goods are 
concealed; and will find it adjudged that special warrants only are legal. 
In the same manner I rely on it, that the writ prayed for in this petition, 
being general, is illegal. It is a power that places the liberty of every man 
in the hands of every petty officer. I say that I admit that special 
writs of assistance, to search special places, may be granted to certain 
persons on oath; but I deny that the writ now prayed for can be granted, 
for I beg leave to make some observations on the writ itself, before I 
proceed to the Acts of Parliament. It is universal, perpetual, servable 
in the daytime, and can be served, not only by deputies, but even by 
their menial servants. Now one of the most essential branches of Enghsh 
liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is Ms castle; and 
while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. TMs 
writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally anniMlate tMs privilege. 
Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are 
commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, 
may break locks, bars, and everything in their way, and whether they 
break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. TMs 
want of exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated 
brain.” (Mr. Otis then continues to show liberty is man’s natural, 
social, and trade right, and how this right had been wrought into the 
Enghsh Constitution—through the old Saxon laws, Magna Charta, 
and 50 confirmations of it in Parliament, and the executions ordained 
against the violators of it, down to the Jameses and Charleses, and the 
Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights, and the Revolution.) 

Before the Supreme Court in Boston Feb., 1761. Says Bancroft in 
3rd volume of Ms History of U. S., p 422: “Otis was a man of many 
sorrows; famihar with grief, as one who had known httle else. The bur¬ 
den of his infirmities was greater than he could bear; Ms fine intellect 
became a ruin, wMch reason wondered over, but did not occupy, and 
by its warning fight showed less the original beauty of the structure than 
the completeness of the overthrow. The remainder of Ms fife was passed 
in seclusion. Years afterward, when Ms country’s independence had 
been declared, he stood one summer’s day in the porch of the farm-house, 
his retreat, watcMng a sudden shower. One flash, and one only, harm¬ 
ing nothing else, struck Otis. In tMs wise all that was mortal of Mm 
perished. 


CORTLANDT PARKER (1818- ), New Jersey 

THE LAW AND ITS PRACTICE 


“Crowds yearly enter the bar and then disappear forever from its 
practice, most of them ready enough to labor, but few with the moral 
courage, even if otherwise able, to wait. But for the thinning process, 
though the defection of despair, constantly going on, there would I fear, 
be little room for those who are fit to stay. There is no profession from 
which desertions are so numerous. And the reason is that in none is 
speedy success so difficult. For after all, the temptation to the bar is 
advocacy. The delight of forensic strife, the fame which follows forensic 
triumph, its rewards in social consideration and political opportunity, 
its frequent ending in judicial place and dignity—it is these which bring 
forward, year by year, the rushing, eager, jostling crowd of youthful 
aspirants, while ambitious parents help, all forgetful of all professions, 
that namely, of the legal advocate. * * * Life in a trade or in a business 
is effort almost only for one’s self. Life in a profession is constant em¬ 
ployment for others. And thus and here, as elsewhere, is it true that 
‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’ * * * Forget yourself in your 
case. Never make a trial or a speech an occasion for self-display. Never, 
if possible, try a cause without thorough information and preparation. 
Abstain from giving more evidence than your case needs. Never rely on 
your advisary to make up your case. Beware of cross-examination— 
it is an edge tool. Regard it generally, as defined to be the art of deter¬ 
mining as by instinct, what questions not to ask. Never do anything 
or say anything merely to please your clients, nor submit to their non- 
intelligent whims. It is his interest, not his whims or his wishes, that 
you are to consult. Admit but one motive, to-wit; the fairly gaining 
his cause, and accustom yourself to seek that from sense of right. The 
client will pardon everything to success.” 

JOSEPH P. BRADLEY 

Mr. Justice Bradley is the most deeply informed man I ever met on 
subjects foreign to his profession.” 

HENRY STANBERY AND THOMAS EWING 

“I remember the distinguished Mr. Justice Grier of the United States 
Supreme Court, one of the foremost among the great judges the country 
has produced, saying that one of the delights and consolations of his 
tedious labors upon the bench was to hear an argument between Henry 
Stanbery and Thomas Ewing, of Ohio. Both these men have national 
fame, and though both enjoyed pohtical honor, their fame as advocates 
is not marred. Their chief distinction was in the forum. Stanbery was 
the skillful, enthusiastic, ready, brilliant, logician. Ewing possessed 
in greater measure the solid, strong, weighty force, which in a measure 
distinguished both. Stanbery wielded the scimitar of Saladin, Ewing the 
battle-axe of Richard.’’^— 'Suggestions to Young Laivyers,’ 1895. 

DAVID GRAHAM AND GEORGE WOOD' 

“Graham was a model of the advocate, pure and simple, the advocate 
through love of the art. Without descending to aught unworthy, his 
zeal for his client during trial was absorbing, and its magnetism irresist¬ 
ible; it seemed to exude from every pore; it fired his eye; it inspired 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


517 


every motion. In manner he was not only courteous but courtly. He 
was a master of the art of fence, unlimited in resources, possessed till 
the verdict with his cause. Difficulty seemed but to stimulate him. 
Nothing could ruffle his apparent conviction of the rightfulness of his 
side, and that was a desperate cause, indeed, which remained so in his 
hands. Juries were entranced by his apparent sincerity and tact, and 
judges half beguiled by his bewildering earnestness. His elocution was 
inipassioned and overwhelming, his ratiocination close and most ingenious. 
His strength seemed to lie in the appearance and energy of his convic¬ 
tions. ^ In the early morning of his fame he died, spotless in character, 
the pride of the young bar of the great city in which he lived. Perhaps, 
had he lived, he might not have remained equally eminent. He loved 
excitement too much, and might have been too exclusively an advocate 
in criminal trials, which in his day the best of the profession conducted. 
Yet, it is greatly to be deplored that branch of advocacy should be avoid¬ 
ed so much by the worthiest of the profession. Nowhere is honorable 
advocacy so essential to the public good. 

“George Wood, a Jersey lawyer, late in life, moved to New York. 
He lived longer, attained more valuable eminence, and was, doubtless, 
the greater man of the two. He was a great advocate, mostly because 
he was a great reasoner and profound lawyer. His early years were given 
up to thoughtful study. Love of classical English gave him a pure Saxon 
style and his arguments were rather calm and dispassionate theses, 
semi-judicial explanations of the law, and applications of it to the case 
in hand than apparent advocacy of his side. As he spoke the feeling was 
that he must be right, he was so clear, so simple, so comprehensive in 
matter of in manner. He talked quietly, without gesture; in such a way 
as that you never thought of art, and yet I am convinced that both his 
manner and his matter were the result of habitual care, study and effort. 
It seems to me that George Wood was the ablest advocate before a court 
within my knowledge. In his peculiar lines of real property, equity and 
corporation law, I do not think that even Webster was his equal. And 
yet he could never have approached the excellence he attained but by 
severe and life-long study. There is an anecdote of Webster that after 
long conferences with a client in a United States Supreme Court case, 
liis client asked if there was anything more that he could help him by 
knowing. ‘Yes,’ said Webster, ‘Who are against us?’ Two or three 
eminent men were named, and the client closed by saying: ‘Besides 
these, there is a sleepy man named George Wood.’ ‘George Wood!’ 
said Webster, ‘then we must try not to wake him up.’ ”— Idem. 

SIXTY-SIX YEARS A PRACTITIONER 

Parker was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1839. He has been a 
practitioner at the bar continuously over sixty-six years. 

— Jas. J. Bergen, on article on '’Mercer Beasley,' 6 Gt. Am. Lawyers, 

53S. 


LORD CAMDEN 

There is an amusing story told of Lord Camden, when a barrister, 
having been fastened upon the stocks on the top of a hill, in order to 
gratify an idle curiosity on the subject. Being left there by the absent- 
minded friend, who had locked him in he found it impossible to procure 
his liberation for the greater part of the day. On his entreating a chance 
traveler to release him, the man shook his head and passed on, remarking 
that of course he was not put there for nothing. 



THEOPHILUS PARSONS (1750-1813), Massachusetts 

SHOULD SUPPORT THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

“You will not probably want these schools for your children, and 
possibly they will not want them for theirs; but many generations that 
succeed them will be sure to need the schools for their own families, for 
they are in all probability to be poor. In this country the wheel of fortune 
not only may, but must, revolve faster in some instances than in others, 
but turn it "must. The rich of any generation are the decendants, and 
generally the immediate descendants, of the poor. Their descendants 
will in most every case take their place among the poor, in one or two 
generations more; and because there are many more of the poor than of 
the rich, each family must number more of its generations among the 
poor than among the rich. If, therefore, you wish to provide for the 
greater number of your own descendants, provide now, permanently, 
for the poor.” 

Judge Powell said of Parsons: “While Parsons knew more law than 
any other man, he knew more of everything else than of law.” 

QUIBBLING 

“If ever quibbling is at any time justifiable, certainly a man may 
quibble for his life.”— In Commonwealth v. Hardy, 2 Mass., 316, 1807. 

INTERRUPTED COUNSEL 

“Parsons was in the habit of addressing very fraternally all the older 
counsellors who had been his associates at the bar. Often when Mr. 
Ames, or Mr. Otis, had arrived at a point at which it was intended to 
introduce some choice and carefully prepared specimen of eloquence, 
the Chief Justice would interpose with, ‘Brother Ames or Brother Otis, 
the Court wishes to hear no more on that point;’ or, ‘you need press that 
no farther; the Court is satisfied on that point.’ The effect of these 
dampers upon Brother Ames, or Brother Otis, was very apparent and 
amounted almost to strangulation. * * * Judge also had the 

habit of frequently interrupting an advocate, and overwhelming him with 
help. Mason, Otis, Story, Ames, Dexter and others were alike the 
sufferers. In the midst of an argument and, when the dislocation of his 
thoughts must be extremely troublesome to the advocate, the Chief 
Justice would say, ‘Brother Dexter, suppose you take this view of it,’ 
and then proceed with an argument, for five minutes or more. This, 
frequently repeated, became insufferable. Upon one occasion, Mr. 
Dexter thought he preceived a tendency rather to make, than administer, 
the law. Dexter finally drew from his pocket a small volume, and said, 
‘May it please yom* Honor, I will read with your permission, a few 
passages from the book which I hold in my hand.’ ‘What book?’ said 
the Chief Justice, taking his pen in his hand to make a note of it. ‘My 
Lord Bacon’s Civil and Moral Essays. I read from the 56th essay, on 
Judicature, ‘Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicere (to 
apply the law) and not jus dare (to make the law); to interpret law, 
and not to make law, or give law. Else will it be like the authority of 
the Church of Rome, wMeh under pretext of exposition of Scripture, 
doth not stick to add and alter; and to pronounce that which they do not 
find; and by show of antiquity to introduce novelty. Judges ought to 
be more learned than witty; more reverened than plausible; and more 
advised than confident. * * * Patience and gravity of hearing is 


GEEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


519 


an essential part of justice; and an over-speaking judge is no well tuned 
cymbal. It is no grace to a judge, first to find that which he might 
have heard in due time from the bar; or to show quickness of conceit 
in cutting off evidence or counsel too short or to prevent information, by 
questions, though pertinent.’ Mr. Dexter quietly replaced the volume 
in his pocket, and proceeded with his argument, without further inter¬ 
ruption.”— Sigma's ^Reminiscences of Sam'l Dexter, 56-8. 

“THEAWPULLEST” PARSONS 

“As I recollect Parsons’ appearance on the bench, he wore a wig 
which came within some two inches of his eyebrows. His whole appear¬ 
ance was ungraceful and unwieldy; furnishing considerable justification 
for a wretched and frequently repeated pun upon his name, ‘Theawfullest 
Parsons.’ ”— Sigma's ^Rem. of Dexter,' 54- 

“KEEPING TIME PROM ETERNITY” 

“A gentleman named ‘Time’ had been concerned in a duel; the ball 
of his antagonist struck his watch and remained there. It thus saved 
his hfe. The Watch was afterwards exhibited, with the ball remaining 
in it, in a company where Judge Parsons was present. It was observed 
by several that it was a valuable watch. ‘Yes,’ said Parsons, ‘very 
excellent; it has kept ‘Time’ from eternity.’ ” 

JUDGE THERON METCALP’S ANECDOTE 

“The Chief Justice’s manner to the Bar, as is well-known, was exceed¬ 
ingly rough. He was no respecter of persons, and treated the old and 
eminent lawyers quite as harshly as the youngsters. The Bar used to 
caU him ‘Ursa Major.’ The chief Justice used to look over the pleadings 
carefully before the trials began. It was in the time when special pleading 
often brought the issue to be decided into a narrow compass. Soon 
after the case was begun, the Judge would take the case out of the hands 
of counsel and examine the witnesses himself, and give an opinion, which 
was likely to be implicitly followed by the jury. Jabez Upham, of Brook¬ 
field, in Worcester County, Mr. Justice Gray’s grandfather, once sent 
his office-boy to Court with a green bag containing his papers, tliinking 
there was no use in going himself. At last, the leading members of the 
Bar of Boston got very angry, and four or five of them agreed together 
to teach the old Chief a lesson. So they sat down to a trial in 
the Supreme Court, where Parsons was presiding. Pretty soon he inter¬ 
fered with the lawyer who was putting in the case for the plaintiff, in 
his rough way. The lawyer rose and said: ‘I cannot take care of my 
client’s rights where my own rights are not respected.’ Sullivan, who was 
possessed of the case, took the place. The trial went on a little while 
when something happened which offended SullivaD. He rose and said 
he could not go on with the case after his Honor’s remark, and would 
ask Brother So-and-So, perhaps Otis, to take his place. This happened 
three or four times in succession. The Chief Justice saw the point and 
adjourned the Court very early for the noon recess, and went to the house 
of his colleague, Judge Sewall, who lived out somewhere in the Neck, 
called him out, and said: ‘You must go down and hold that Court. 
There is a conspiracy, sir!’ Parsons never held a nisi prius in Suffolk 
again.”— 2 Geo. F. Hoar's \4utobiography of 70 Years,' 397-8. 

JUDGE LEMUEL SHAW’S EXPERIENCE 

“Chief Justice Shaw used to tell with great indignation the story of 
his first appearance before Parsons, when a young man. There was a 


520 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


very interesting question of the law of real property, and Samuel Dexter, 
then the head of the Bar, was on the other side. Parsons was interested 
in the question as soon as it was stated, and entered into a discussion 
with Dexter, in which they both got earnestly engaged. The Chief 
Justice intimated his opinion very strongly and was just deciding it in 
Dexter’s favor, when the existence of the young man on the other side 
occurred to him. He looked over the Bar at Shaw and said: ‘Well, 
young man, do you think you can aid the Court any in this matter?’ 
‘I think I can, sir,’ said Shaw with spirit. Parsons listened to him, but, 
I believe, remained of his first opinion.” 

—2 Geo. F. Hoar's ^Autobiography of 70 Years,' 398. 

HIS OPINION STUCK IN HIS THROAT 

A chent wrote a letter to Parsons, stating a case and requesting his 
opinion upon it, and enclosing $20. After a lapse of some time, receiving 
no answer, he wrote a second letter, informing him of his first communica-' 
tion. Parsons replied that he had received both letters, had examined the 
case, and formed his opinion, but somehow or other, “it stuck in his 
throat.” The client understood the hint, sent him $100, and received the 
opinion. 

MADE COUNSEL STATE WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO STAND 

ON 

“He generally required the counsel to state to him his points before he 
began. If they were in his judgment wholly untenable or insufficient, 
he permitted no argument, and allowed the case to go no further than was 
requisite to present to the whole court the question of law, if there was 
one, by which it might be decided whether the nonsuit of default he ordered 
should be taken off. 

“At Worcester, Prank Blake, perhaps the leading lawyer of the county, 
and one of Judge Parsons’ most intimate friends, arose to argue a case: 
‘Stop a moment. Brother Blake,’ said Judge Parsons. ‘What points do 
you propose to present to the jury on this evidence?’ ‘I will, if your 
Honor pleases, state them to the jury.’ ‘No, you must state them to the 
court first.’ ‘I decline doing so, may it please your Honor; and I insist 
on my right to address the jury in my own way.’ ‘Certainly, if you ad¬ 
dress them at all, you may address them in your own way, and there 
can be no better; but I must first know whether you have any ease to 
speak about. I do not now see one; but perhaps you may point one out.’ 
‘I will endeavor to do so to the jury.’ ‘No, you must do so first to me.’ 
‘This I positively decline.’ ‘Very well, with any view of the case I can 
now take, you will waste the time of the jury, the court, and the county, 
by any argument.’ Mr. Blake then rose, and turning to the jury began: 
‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ when Judge Parsons instantly said, ‘Mr. Sheriff, 
commit Mr. Blake to close jail,’ and quietly rose, and began charging 
the jury.” 

— Theophilvs Parsons, Jr. ^Memoirs of Theophilus Parsons, Sr.' 

209. 

MR. TRISTAM BURGES REFUSED TO STATE HIS POINTS 

“In Taunton, Mr. Burges, of Rhode Island, when asked to state his 
points, rose and stated one. ‘That is no point at all. Brother Burges; 
have you another?’ ‘Yes, your Honor,’ and stated it. ‘You have not a 
particle of evidence for that point, as you very well know; what other?’ 
And so the thing went on, until Judge Parsons flatly refused to let him 
speak. ‘May it please your Honor, I think I have a good case, an excellent 
case, and believe I can satisfy the jury of it, and demand as matter of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


521 


right permission to try,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘A very good case you li^ve, 
no doubt; but, unluckily, no evidence, and therefore nothing to go to the 
the jury on.’ Mr. Burges at once gathered up his papers, and marched 
indignantly out of court, while Judge Parsons proceeded to charge the 
jury. Outside, Mr. Burges harangued the crowd about the Chief Justice’s 
insupportable tyranny, until all at once, he observed the Judge as one 
of his listeners, who said when he stopped his tirade, ‘Brother Burges, 
if you get through in season, I wish you would come in and dine with me.’ 
Pausing a moment, Mr. Burges exclaimed, ‘I give it up; I give it all up;’ 
and took the Judge’s arm and they walked off together.” 

— Parson's Memoirs, 209-11. 

HAD A POOR OPINION OF ORATORY 

Chief Justice Parsons used to say that eloquence was an unfortunate 
gift for a lawyer, as it prejudiced the jury against him, and thus lundered 
his success. “A jury will determine beforehand,” he used to say, “that 
an eloquent talker shall not hoodwink them, or exercise a mastery over 
their minds. Consequently they set themselves to resist the power of 
his persuasion.” Judge Parker used to tell a capital anecdote in con¬ 
firmation of Judge Parsons’s opinion. 

“When Parsons was a young lawyer, he was retained to argue an 
important case in a Maine court. He was unknown to the people, and 
even to the lawyers. Parker had heard of him as a rising man, and was 
drawn to the court-room by curiosity to learn the secret of his power. 
Parsons began liis plea by putting one foot in a chair; then leaning one 
elbow on his knee, he talked to the jury as a man would tell a story at 
his fireside. ‘Pretty soon I thought I understood him,’ said Parker. 
‘He was winding the jury round his fingers. He made no show. He 
treated the case as if it were a very simple affair, of which the conclusion 
was obvious and inevitable; and he did not take long. He got a verdict 
at once; and after the jury were dismissed, one of them, whom I happened 
to know, came to me and said, ‘Who is this Mr. Parsons ? He isn’t much 
of a lawyer, and don’t talk or look as if he ever would be one; but he seems 
to be a real good sort of a man.’ ” 


WM. M. EVARTS’ CONTINGENT FEE 

A New Yorker asked Evarts what he would charge for managing a 
certain law case. 

“Well,” said Evarts, “I ivill take your case on a contingent fee.” 

“And what is a contingent fee?” 

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Evarts, mellifuously, “I will tell you what a 
contingent fee to a lawyer means. If I don’t win your suit I get nothing. 
If I do win it you get nothing. See?” 


THE LAWYER WAGERED $10.00 

Pat, a one-eyed Irish lawyer, bet the Yankee judge ten dollars that 
he could see more with one eye than the judge could with two, and agreed 
to leave it to his honor to say who had won the bet. 

“Well,” said the Judge, “go ahead. Let’s hear how you can see more 
than I can.” 

“You see” said Pat, “I can see two eyes in your head, while you can 
see but one in mine.” The judge passed him the ten. 




GEORGE R. PECK (1843- ), Kansas 

THE THINKER 


“The citadel that crowns the mountain’s brow, nay, the mountains 
themselves, ancient, rugged, motionless, are but toys compared with the 
silent, invisible, but eternal structm-e of God’s handiwork, the mind. 
* * * The village of Concord, where Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, 

Thoreau lived, was in their day, and will long continue to be a greater 
force in this nation than New York and Chicago added to each other. 
We may rest in the assured faith that whoever may seem to rule, the 
thinker is, and always will be, the master.” 

— Geo. R. Peck, The Kingdom of Light." an address before the 
Phantom Club, at Phantom Lake, Wis., 1906. 

MIND AGAINST FORCE 

“When I hear the glorification of the last twenty years, of the fields 
subdued, the roads built, the fortunes accumulated, the factories started, 
I say to myself, all these are good, but not good enough that we should 
make ourselves hoarse with huzzas, or that we should suppose for a 
moment they belong to the higher order of achievements. Sometimes, 
too, when I hear the noisy clamor over some great difficulty that has 
been conquered, I think of James Wolfe under the walls of Quebec, 
repeating sadly those solemn lines of Gray’s Elegy: 

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r. 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave. 

Await the inevitable hour; 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’ 

“And I think also how he turned to his officers with the pathetic pre¬ 
vision of the death that was to come to-morrow on the Heights of 
Abraham, and said, T would rather have written that poem than to take 
Quebec.’ And he was right.”— Id^m. 

GENERAL GRANT 

“But what was he? A general who never lost a battle; a leader who 
never quailed in any presence; a commander whose supreme hour was 
always now. He knew the home-spun word, duty. By the light of that 
sublime word he moved on Donelson in the dead of winter, and wrested 
from the enemy its most important fortress and an army larger than 
his own. By its light, he drew the lines around Vicksburg’s fated garrison 
and held them with a deadly grip until another army yielded up its arms. 
By its light he grappled in the wilderness, and in that desperate hour, 
saw the dark woods grow white with the radiance of the coming triumph. 
A genius, perhaps, he was not. But he had the largeness of comprehension, 
that mastery of self, that relentless vigor of action, which if it does not 
always win the battle, never loses it. They said he was not always 
true to the military rule; but the time will come when his campaigns 
will be studied by students of war, as are those of Marlborough and 
Frederick. Men talk of luck, as if the keys of destiny were thrown 
carelessly around for any hand to grasp. True it is, there is a mysterious, 
indefinable something compounded of time and opportunity which makes 
success. But mark how scornfully it passes by the slothful and the 
timorous to set its seal upon the brow of him who answers to the call of 
fate. T doubted that it was right to set the fiag a little closer to the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


523 


enemy.’ He never walked in primrose paths. War, as he understood 
it, meant hard, rough blows, the cruelty of battle, the hammer and the 
anvil now, peace and her mercies when God shall appoint the hour. In 
his Memoirs he has told us how little taste he had for military life. Nature 
formed him of gentle mould and tempered him also with the resolute 
will, the iron nerve ‘to turn occasion true.’ 

“How plain and simple he was. The feverish vision that disturbs the 
souls of so many great soldiers never troubled him. The ambition that 
bubbles of glory and whispers sometimes of thrones and diadems found 
him deaf to every voice, save that which bade him go forward to the duty 
that lay nearest. I call him great, not forgetting that greatness commonly 
needs the perspective of years. It is the antique that seems colossal. 
You wreathe the name of Pericles with glory, but his contemporaries 
deemed him worthy of fines and punishment. English hands exhumed 
the bones of Oliver Cromwell and hung them on a gibbet. Today history 
has named him incomparably the greatest of English soldiers and of 
English rulers. Washington, Lincoln, Grant tasted the bitterness that 
gathers in the cup of the world’s greatest men. 

“Who hath hved without blame. If Grant had faults they may be 
summed up in these words, ‘he loved his friends and did not hate his 
enemies.’ His nature was simple and his very faults made him more 
easy to deceive. But, I, for one, would not have it otherwise. I would 
not take from that nolile fife one little fiaw through which the real bright¬ 
ness of his character shines more plain. Victory is sweet to a soldier’s 
heart. When Lee surrendered, the measure of success so far as that can 
go, was heaped and crowded for U. S. Grant. He had won for all time the 
fame of a great general. But he was something more than a great general 
when the hour he bade the weary soldiers he had fought so long, go back 
to their farms, and build up their broken fortunes in the peace he had 
won for them and for us all. It was an act such as poets love. When 
they sing of Arthur and the table round, or of the fabled Cid, whose 
gentle hands bound up the wounds his own right arm had made. Some 
blossoms from the famous apple tree dropped into the old commander’s 
heart and filled it with the sweetness of the spring. But why dwell on 
these things? The great leader is at rest. How widely diffused have 
been his acts and his example. In quiet vales, in thronging cities and 
upon the uttermost land men speak of Grant and find in his very name 
omens of security and peaces The armies he led, vanishing now with 
the vanishing years, share his fame. This statue, and all the monuments 
a grateful people raised to him, attest equally the every day heroism of 
the common soldier. The good cause is well commemorated. Ip the old 
days, old and grim as they seem now, we thought of a mighty and puissant 
nation that was to be. We thought of it as free, as great, noble, powerful, 
unanimous. To help on the coming of such a nation as we thought it 
worth while to fight, and some, who were of the best and bravest, thought 
it almost a privilege to die. And now the dream has come true. This 
statue is history in bronze. It means all that the war has accomphshed, 
peace, freedom, and the inviolable sections of national unity to you, 
and the lesson it teaches. Grasp the meaning of the word duty, and you 
have the answer. For gloried is that home-spun word in Wordworth’s 
immortal line—‘Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong.’ 

“The very universe is but the obedient response to an omnipotent 
thought. It is only duty that holds systems together, and fills all space 
with the melody of order and of law. 

“Here let the statue stand, the tribute of generous hearts to a high 
ideal. You will come with reverent steps to look upon it, and when the 
air is loud with the noise and turbulence of faction, they will hear above 
it all the solemn words of the old commander, ‘Let us have peace!’ ” 

—From speech at the unveiling of a Monument to Oen. Grant, at 
Fort Leavenworth, Kans. 


524 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


GHOSTS AND SHADOWS 

“In every street, shadows are walking who were once brave, hopeful 
and confident. Nay! They are not shadows; but ghosts, dead, years 
ago, in everything except the mere physical portion of existence. They 
go through the regular operation of trade and traffic, the office, and the 
court; but they are not living men. They are but bones and skeletons 
rattling along in melancholy routine, which has in it neither life, nor 
the spirit of life. It is a sad picture, but saddest because it is true. They 
know what happy days were, when they walked in pleasant paths and 
felt in their hearts the freshness of the spring. But contact with the 
world was too much for them. Hesitation and doubt drove out loyalty 
and faith. They listened to the voice of worldly wisdom as Othello 
listened to lago, and the end of the story is: 

“ ‘Put out the light, and then, put out the light!’ ” 

THE KINGDOM OF LIGHT 

“This is the lesson I would give: Dwell in the Kingdom of Light. 
And where is that kingdom? What are its boundaries? What cities 
are builded within it? What hiUs and plains, and mountain slopes 
gladden the eyes of its possessors? Be patient. Do not hasten to search 
for it. It is here. The Kingdom of Light, like the kingdom of God, 
is within you. And what do I mean by the kingdom of light? I mean 
that realm of which a quaint old poet said those quaint old lines: 

“ ‘My kingdom to me a kingdom is. 

Such perfect joy therein I find.’ 

“I mean that invisible commonwealth which outlives the storms of 
ages; that state whose armament are thoughts, whose weapons are 
ideas, whose trophies are the pages of the world’s great masters. The 
kingdom of light is the kingdom of the intellect, of the imagination, 
of the heart, of the spirit, and the things of the spirit.” 

THE STUPID 

“It is the stupid, and not the wise, who never err.” 

—From an Article on J. J. Ingalls. 

George R. Peck was general solicitor for the Atchison, Topeka and 
Santa Pe Ry. Co. for years at $25,000 a year, a greater part of the time 
located in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Peck, while he lived in Kansas, refused 
pohtical and judicial positions, among them a U. S. Senatorship, pre¬ 
ferring to stick to the law. 


FRAUD 

“Fraud vitiates everything into which it enters. It is like the deadly 
and noxious simoom of arid and desert climes. It prostrates all before 
its contaminating touch, and leaves death only and destruction in its 
train. No act however solemn, no agreement however sacred, can resist 
its all-destroying power.” 

—Commercial Bank of Manchester v. Buckner, 20 Howard, 109. 



EDWARD J. PHELPS (1822-1900), Vermont 


Edward J. Phelps: “You have performed the duty devolving upon 
you in a manner deserving of admiration. You have blended the deep 
science of the lawyer with the refinement of the man of letters, and the 
dignity of the diplomatist. The court appreciates the delicacy of the 
touch with which you have handled matters already before us in mani¬ 
fold form. I beg to be allowed to consider the laurels which you have 
won at this cosmopolitan bar as a fair addition to the wreath of honors 
that you have conquered in other fields of the old and new world.” 

— Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, of France, President of the 
Bering Sea Tribunal, before whom Mr. Phelps appeared. 

LANGUAGE, A MONUMENT 

“The earth is studded with monuments. Prom the earliest period of 
recorded time mankind has striven for a language more durable than 
words, in which human memories might be perpetuated. They have 
found it chiefly in the symbohsm of monumental architecture. But 
for the employment of that language there must be sentiments to be 
transmitted worthy of its granduer. In those lie the appeal to futurity, 
not in the medium of expression, however powerful or expressive. And, 
therefore, it is that the most imposing and venerable of such structures 
known to the world only stand silently over the grave of the dead past. 
They have no history to relate, no lesson to teach, solitary relics of a race 
that is extinct, a civilization that has perished, institutions that have 
disappeared, cities and temples that have returned to the dust, to research 
and imagination they are equally dumb. The desolation of the desert 
surrounds them. We regard them with wonder, but without instruction.” 
— The Bennington, Vt., Centennial, Aug. 19, 1891. 

THE AMERICAN LAWYER 

“Perhaps the brethren of our profession do not always remember the 
high prerogative, which under our system of fundamental law, different 
from any other we know of, the American bar enjoys. Lawyers in other 
countries have nothing to do as lawyers with constitutional principles, 
government, or with the basis on winch its administration stands. They 
deal exclusively with the administration of justice, civil and criminal, 
between man and man, under a government established and fixed, with 
the operation of which they have professionally no concern. We, on 
the other hand, are charged with the safe-keeping of the Constitution 
itself.” — Before Am. Bar Ass'n., Saratoga, N. Y., Aug. 21, 1879. 

RUFUS CHOATE, CULTURED 

“Perhaps the most brilhant example of the effect of literary culture 
upon advocacy that ever appeared at the bar was that of Rufus Choate. 
Now the spirit and the voice of the old civilizations, those splendid intel¬ 
lectual civilizations that have passed away, the silver-tongued Greek, 
the sonorous Latin, as well as the grand old English undefiled, lived again 
in his eloquence. He is the brilliant example of what culture and scholar¬ 
ship, familiarity with letters, does for the advocate. Mere advocacy 
never hews the way. Reason, logic, learning does that. But it illumi¬ 
nates. It is the calcium fight that points the way that reason hews out 
tlirough the rocks, that the wayfaring man may see it.” 

—^Law as a Profession,’ classday address to Boston University 
Law School graduates, June 3, 1879. 


526 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


INTELLECTUAL HONESTY OF LAWYER 

“Now, the great requisite, as it seems to me, the one that in its per¬ 
fection, I have often thought, the very rarest intellectual quality that 
a man is capable of, the one to be most assiduously cultivated, and per¬ 
haps, the one that best repays culture, is what, for want of a better 
term, I may call intellectual honesty. It is a mental and not a moral 
quality. Of course, it is one which involves high moral integrity. But 
those who are honest in their intentions and purposes, merely, may 
fall far short of it. By intellectual honesty, I mean the faculty of seeing 
things as they are, unmoved by prejudice, or passion, or excitement, 
or clamor, seeing them, and reaching conclusions in regard to them, in 
a straightforward and direct, instead of a circuitous, way. That is the 
leading characteristic of every great lawyer or judge that has ever lived, 
and the want of it is the reason why the world has seen so many good 
lawyers and good judges, and so few great ones. It is the rarest of 
qualities in its perfection, and the first to be recognized by mankind 
when it exists. Men will quarrel over the merits of poets and statesmen 
and inventors, but when that ma^strate presents himself in the admin¬ 
istration of justice, who has in high degree this quality of intellectual 
honesty, everybody recognizes and appreciates it. Perhaps, the most 
illustrious example there has ever been, among many illustrious examples 
of that quahty, was Chief Justice Marshall, that magistrate of all magis¬ 
trates, whose splendid judgments have entered, not only into the juris¬ 
prudence, but into the lustory and hterature of our country.” 

—''The Law as a Profession,' Boston, Mass., June 3, 1879. 

INDEPENDENCE OF A FREE GOVERNMENT 

“The history of the Saxon race exhibits few changes more striking 
than the succession of power. First, in the king; then when royal suprem¬ 
acy became intolerable, in the hands of the barons, who struck the ear¬ 
liest blow for freedom, and long stood between the throne and the people, 
the supporters of one, the protectors of the other. When, in the course of 
time that oligarchy had in its turn abused its authority, it passed to the 
Parliament chosen by the people. And when, at last, the founders of 
our Constitution, driven to revolution by a parliamentary oppression, 
had learned that even representative government cannot always be de¬ 
pended upon by those it represents, they placed the protection of personal 
rights beyond the reach of the popular will, and found in a constitutional 
judiciary the true and final custodian of the liberty of the subject.” 

—^ The U. S. Supreme Court and the Sovereignty of the People,' 
N. Y. City, Feb. i, 1900. 

DANIEL WEBSTER, AN INTERNATIONAL LAWYER 

“There can be no higher or more truly American authority than his 
(Webster’s) on any question of international right, on which he ever 
had occasion to impress himself.” 

—On ^ The Panama Mission,' the 'Monroe Doctrine,' Brooklyn 
N. Y., Mar. SO, 1876. 

PROPHECY AND HOPE 

“The gift of prophecy is mercifully withheld from man, but that 
hope, kindlier than prophecy, stands in the place of it, and it beholds 
with the eye of faith the great principles of civil and religious liberty, 
working themselves out to their final maturity, a prosperity more and 
more widely diffused among common men; an advancing civilization not 
without the vicissitudes, the blemishes, the mistakes, the sorrows through 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


527 


which humanity’s path must always lie, but in which the gain shall surpass 
the loss, and the better surmount the worse, enlightened, from gener¬ 
ation to generation, by the increasing intelligence, and a liigher morality.” 

—'Anniversary Oration,' Bennington, Vt, 1891. 

PHELPS AS A LAWYER 

“Mr. Phelps was not a case lawyer; but a great lawyer; he understood 
law as a science; was thoroughly grounded in its great fundamental 
principles; he could analyze and generalize equally well; easily made his 
way through intricacies to the fundamental principle which solved the 
problem. During his occupancy of the Kent professorship at Yale, it 
was one of the most noted in the country.” 


CAN READ TOO MUCH 

“What booteth it to read much, which is a weariness to the flesh; 
to learn daily with increase of knowledge; when he hath learned, and per¬ 
haps, then especially, when he hath most need thereof? Without this, 
our studies are but lost labor,”— Legalist Ratio, 15, A. D., 1675. 


POLITICAL PRINCIPLES—ETERNAL 

“I would not be unjust to heroism in the field in a good cause, or be 
ungrateful to those who have exposed their lives, as well as fortunes 
and sacred honor, for their country, from Leonidas and Scipio of anti¬ 
quity to the Washington of modern days. But it behooves us all to remem¬ 
ber that even in modern days physical bravery is often wasted in a bad 
enterprise and perverted in the Tamerlanes and Caesars and Napoleons 
and Santa Annas to enslave mankind, as frequently as to emancipate 
them; and that its triumphs are transient, personal, and at times die in 
their withered hopes and guilty ambition moulder with them, in one 
common grave. Political principles, on the contrary, are eternal. They 

E ervade society and government as air and water pervade physical 
eing. They control them, too, as the different elements control veg¬ 
etation and animal life; and they move the whole, as the mechanic 
powers and other great laws of motion, constitute a mechanism that 
moves the universe, and they will continue to do this as long, as widely 
and as deeply as the others pervade matter; and in this way civilization 
and liberty are, if ever, to become universal, eternal. 

“Among the high justifying principles involved in any civil contest, 
one of the highest was at stake in the Revolution of 1776, and tended 
much to enhance its lofty interest, and the magnificence of its conse¬ 
quences. It was the principle of self-government. That lies at the 
foundation of all security for liberty. That made the struggle vital as 
well as righteous. The first illustration of this principle was that man 
should not be taxed, except by himself or agent. ‘No taxation without 
representation,’ reverberated through every American village and 
legislative assembly—crossed the ocean and rung through the halls of 
Parliament and the palace of St. James. The next illustration involved 
the idea of natural equality in political power, and the duty of all govern¬ 
ment to respect, shield and enforce those equal rights and carry out all 
their elevating influence to the toiling millions, no less than other classes. 
It is these and not the burning of gun powder and the hecatombs of killed 
and wounded, which have imparted such a magnitude to that contest 
and its successful results and have given to those over the civilized 
world almost the interest of a great epic poem.” 

—From Levi Woodhury's oration at Portsmouth, N, H , July 1850. 
1 ^Woodbury's Writings', 577-8. 




CHARLES PHILLIPS (1788- ), Ireland 

PHILLIPS’ DESCRIPTION OF PLUNKET 

“Who is that square-built, solitary, ascetic-looking person, pacing to 
and fro, hands crossed behind his back, so apparently absorbed in self— 
the observer of all, yet the companion of none? It is easy to designate 
the man, but difficult adequately to delineate the character. Perhaps 
never was a person to be estimated less by appearances; he is precisely 
the reverse of what he feels; extremely cold, yet ardent in his nature; 
in manner repulsive, yet warm, sincere, and steadfast in his friendships; 
severe in aspect, yet in reality social and companionable—that is Plunket 
—a man of the foremost rank, a wit, a jurist, a statesman, an orator, 
a logician, the Irish Gysippus, as Curran called him; in whom are con¬ 
centrated all the energies and all the talents of the country. Eminent 
at the bar, it is in Parliament we see his faculties in their fullest develop¬ 
ment. Yet, in the Irish House of Commons, his chief displays were on 
a single question, that of the Union; and in the British Parliament, 
that of the Roman Catholic question.” 

—As sketched when Plunket was in his 'prime. 

DEFENSE OF WIDOW WILKINS 

“It has been left to me to defend my unfortunate old client from the 
double battery of Love and Law, which, at the age of sixty-five, has so 
unexpectedly opened on her. Oh, gentlemen, how vain glorious is the 
boast of beauty! How misapprehended have been the charms of youth, 
if years and wrinkles can thus despoil their conquests, and depopulate 
the navy of its prowess, and beguile the bar of its eloquence. How 
mistaken were all the amatory bards, from Anacreon downwards, who 
preferred the bloom of the robe and the trill of the nightingale to the 
saffron hide and dulcet treble of sixty-five! * * * What a loss the 

navy had of him, and what a loss he had of the navy! Alas, gentlemen, 
he could not resist his affection for a female he never saw! Almighty 
love eclipsed the glories of ambition! Trafalgar and St. Vincent flitted 
from his memory! He gave up all for woman as Mark Antony did 
before him; and, like the cupid in Hudibras, he— 

“ ‘Took his stand 

Upon a widow’s jointure land; 

His tender sigh and trickling tear 
Longed for five hundred pounds a year; 

And languishing desires were found 
Of statute, mortgage, bill and bond.’ 

“Oh, gentlemen, only imagine him on the lakes of North America! 
Alike to him the varieties of season and the vicissitudes of warfare. One 
sovereign image monopolizes his sensibilities. Does the storm rage? 
The Widow Wilkins outsighs the whirlwind. Is the ocean calm? Its 
mirror shows him the Widow Wilkins. Is the battle won? He thanks 
his laurels that the Widow Wilkins may interweave her myrtles. Does 
the broadside thunder? He invokes the Widow Wilkins. 

“ ‘A sweet little cherub, she sits up aloft 
To keep watch for the life of poor Peter.’ ” 

—In Blake v. Wilkins for breach of promise. 


GREAT BAYINGR BY GREAT LAWYERS 


529 


EDUCATION 

“Of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence to allow us to 
cultivate, there is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a 
heavenlier aspect, than education. It is a companion which no mis¬ 
fortune can depress, no crime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism 
enslave, at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, 
in society an ornament, it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once 
a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid 
slave! A reasoning savage! Vacillating between the dignity of an intelli¬ 
gence derived from God and the de^adations of passions participated 
with brutes, and, in the accident of their alternate ascendency, shuddering 
at the terrors of an hereafter, or hugging the horrid hope of annihilation.” 

He was graduated at Dublin University and called to the Irish bar, in 
1812, where his florid oratory obtained him considerable practice in 
adultery, seduction, and breach-of-promise-of-marriage cases. He collected 
his speeches, in ’17, and they reached a large sale, edited “Specimens of 
Irish Eloquence,” and wrote, “Recollections of Curran,” and afterwards 
went to London and was a particular friend of Ijord Brougham. 

CURRAN’S RISE FROM POVERTY, AS TOLD BY HIM 

“I then hved upon Hay Hill; my wife and children were the chief 
furniture of my apartments; and as to my rent, it stood pretty much the 
same chance of liquidation with the national debt. Mrs. Curran, however, 
was a barrister’s lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was well deter¬ 
mined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, 
had no idea of any gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. 
I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the 
subject, with my mind, you may imagine, in no very enviable temper¬ 
ament. I fell into the gloom to which, from my infancy, I had been oc¬ 
casionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a land¬ 
lady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence. I 
returned home almost in desperation. When I opened the door of my 
study, where Lavater alone could have found a hbrary, the first object 
which presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty golden 
guineas wrapped up beside it, and the name of Old Bob Lyons marked 
upon the back of it. I paid my landlady, bought a dinner, gave Bob 
Lyons a share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity.” 
—Said hy Curran as related hy Phillips. Chas. Phillips' ^Curran 
and His Contemporaries', N. Y., 1851, p. 50. 

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 

“He is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which 
towered among us hke some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the 
glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, flowery and peculiar, he 
sat upon the throne a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own 
originality. A mind, bold, independent, decisive; a will despotic in its 
dictates; an enemy that distanced expedition; and a conscience pliable 
to every touch of interest, marked the outhne of this extraordinary 
character, the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this 
world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. 

“Flung into life in the midst of a revolution that quickened every 
energy of a people who acknowledged no superior, he commenced this 
course, a stranger by birth and a scholar by charity! With no friend but 
his sword and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where 
rank and wealth and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition 
fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but 


530 


GEEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


interest, he acknowledged no criterion but success, he worshipped no god 
but ambition, and with an Eastern devotion, he knelt at the shrine of 
his idolatry. 

“Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not promulgate; 
in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, 
he bowed before the cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted 
child of the republic; and with a practical ingratitude, on the ruins both 
of the throne and tribute, he reared the throne of his despotism. A 
professed Catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a pretended patriot, he 
impoverished the country; and in the name of Brutus, he grasped without 
remorse and wore without shame the diadem of the Caesars. Through 
this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. 
At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the 
wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable 
and all that was novel changed places with the rapidity of the drama. 

“Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory; his flight 
from Egypt confirmed his destiny; ruin itself only elevated him to em¬ 
pire. But, if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision 
flashed upon his counsels; and it was the same to decide and to perform. 
To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly^impossible, 
his plans perfectly impracticable, and success vindicated their adoption. 
His person partook the character of his mind—if the one never yielded 
in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacle 
that he did not surmount; space no opposition that he did not spurn; 
whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed 
proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity. 

“The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, 
and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies 
of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there 
aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the 
world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over the most 
ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplace in 
his contemplation; kings were his people, nations were his outposts, and 
he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets 
as if they were titular dignitaries of the chessboard. Amid all these 
changes, he stood immutable as adamant. 

“It matters little, whether in the field or in the drawingroom, with the 
mob or the levee, wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown, ban¬ 
ishing a Braganza or espousing a Hapsburg, dictating peace on a raft 
of the Czar of Russia or contemplating defeat at the gallows of I^eipsic, 
he was still the same military despot. 

“In this wonderful combination, his affections of literature must not 
be omitted. The jailer of the press, he affected the patronage of letters; 
the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy; the persecutor of 
authors and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection 
of learning. Such a medley of contradictions and at the same time such 
an individual consistency were never united in the same character. A 
royalist, a republican, and an emperor; a Mohammedan, a Catholic, 
and a patron of the synagogue; a subaltern and a sovereign; a traitor 
and a tyrant; a Christian and an infidel; he was through all his vicissi¬ 
tudes the same stern, impatient, inflexible, original; the same mysterious, 
incomprehensible self—a man without a model, and without a shadow.” 


JOHN F. PHILLIPS (1834-1919), Missouri 

DEATH AND RESURRECTION 


“A funeral in the gloom and desolation of winter always depresses 
me. These forest trees, bereft of fohage, the grass dead, flowers faded 
and gone, these flowers that he over his casket all too soon to fade away. 
The summer birds hushed, all earth lying drear and chill; but we know 
that after a while the sun will rise higher and higher toward the zenith 
till its warming rays will meet the ice; the birds will begin to sing as the 
harbingers of spring, gentle flowers will peep from beneath their winter 
beds and lend their cheeks to be kissed by the summer sun into new life, 
and all Nature will again perform the sacred mystery of reproductive 
growth. To me this is an epitome of the resurrection, and assurance that 
this mortality will put on immortahty, and when the morning sunlight 
of the resinrection day shall flash over the cemeteries and the ashes 
and dust of loved ones gone shall come forth in glory, we have a sublime 
faith that among those redeemed souls shall be that of Frank James.” 
—From Remarks at Grave of Frank James, Feb. 21, 1915. 

ADVICE TO THE YOUNG LAWYER 

“The profession you have chosen is among the most exalted that ever 
engaged the ambition of intellectual men. It belongs essentially to the 
category of the noble sciences. It is a mighty instrument in the hands 
of a slnlled expert, either for widespread mischief, or private public 
good. If you sow and plant and cultivate in dishonor, so will you reap 
and gather. Ceaseless vigilance, persistent and consistent industry are 
the inexorable conditions of success. Common lawyers can be picked 
up in heaps, for they lie thick about the level waysides; but the excel¬ 
lent ones are at the tops of the ragged steeps. Yours, more than any other, 
is the profession to which the present and posterity must look for the 
preservation of what is beneficent and cohesive in social organism, and 
for the security and perpetuation of what is rational in a limited dem¬ 
ocratic government. If you observe and enforce these things, your pro¬ 
fession will prove to be a cornucopia, showering you with golden blessings; 
and you make the world all the better for your living in it.” 

—Judge John F. Phillips, of the U. S. District Court, to the law 
students of the Kansas City School of Law. 

JOHN MILLS ALLEN, OF MISSISSIPPI 

“The passing away of John Mills Allen brings to me deep pangs of 
sorrow. For more than a score of years we were close friends. I have 
traveled, eaten, drunk and banqueted with him, heard him speak, talk 
and laugh. Rarely endowed with a wit and humor that never dulled or 
tired, he was one of the most dehghtful companions I ever met. He 
got more out of life and spread more sunshine about him than words can 
speak. His wit was not studied, nor was his incomparable humor stere¬ 
otyped. I have heard him tell the same stories that would have fatigued 
with their repetition from any other man, but he told them with ever- 
varying zest and detail that gave them a taste of freshness, and that 
lost no interest even though his listener knew the climax. He was 
always spontaneous. ^ . 

“I recall a trip with him to the Yellostone Park in 1901 with as rare 
a party of brilliant, jolly men as ever journeyed together. We were the 
guests of Col. George R. Peck at his summer home at Oconomowoc, Wis. 
We were entertained at an evening dinner at Fred Peck’s. A royal feast 


532 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


was set on a broad veranda at the lake front. The Grand Army of the 
Republic was holding convention there. They gathered around the 
veranda. George Peck constituted himself toastmaster. 

‘“He introduced me as a representative of the Union Army, to which I 
responded briefly. He then said that the occasion was rendered peculiarly 
happy in that there was present ‘the only private in the Confederate 
army, with the Star Spangled banner,’ floating over him, representing 
the best government on earth, which John Allen had tried to destroy, 
and now he had for an audience the audience the veterans of the Union 
Army. Allen, mth cigar in mouth, arose and among other things, said: 

“ ‘Veterans of the Union Army, I never saw your faces before, but 
I saw your backs often during the war. But for the fact that a Southern 
soldier would not shoot a man in the back you would all be in your graves 
tonight. You would not tliink in looking at the rotund, obese form of 
George Peck, that he was a sprinter; yet but for the fact that he could 
outrun a minnie bullet I would have shot him dead in battle. I am glad 
I missed overtaking him, otherwise he would not be here tliis evening 
eating the rich things that came from the land where grow brave men and 
pumpkins.’ When the coach in which we were riding reached the summit 
of the Great Divide, it stopped. Peck said: 

“ ‘John Allen, look to your right, and to the left, and behold two of the 
finest vistas your eyes ever beheld. One brings to view the 
mountain rising in grandeur to the sky, and the other toward the Yellow¬ 
stone Lake, twenty miles away, glimmering like a sea of silver. Aren’t 
you sorry you tried to disrupt a country that contains such a feast for 
the human eye?’ Adlen replied: ‘Yes, George, it Alls me with a feeling of 
sadness. The South before the war was full of these vistas, but you 
Yankees came down there during the war, stole them and fetched them 
up North to gloat over it, as you exhibit them to the fallen foe.’ At 
Larry’s camp, where we spent the night, at sunset a large bear came down 
the mountain to forage in the refuse of the camp deposited in a depression. 
The ground round about formed a huge ampitheater, on which perhaps a 
hundred tourists were standing, watching the bear, which had tumbled 
over a barrel into which he had thrust his head devouring its contents. 

“Allen took off his coat and handed it to me. Rolling up his ihirt 
sleeves, he faced his audience, to whom he was a stranger, and said: 

“ ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to give you an exhibition of Southern 
valor, to which you Northern people know so little. I am going to attack 
that bear in single combat, and do not propose to use any arms on him; 
all I ask of you is to see that he does not use his arms on me!’ When 
he advanced the bear heard him cracking his fists together, and with¬ 
drawing his head from the barrel, began to back away. Whereat Allen 
said: 

“‘Mr. Bear, perhaps you do not care to encounter me in tliis fasliion; 
if so we will change the affair into a talking match; you can reply when 
I am through, if the evening be long enough. I will deliver my last 
speech in Congress on the tariff.’ (Then raising bis voice, until it echoed 
from liilltop to nilltop in that high altitude, he said): 

“ ‘Mr. Speaker, though a trite subject, the tariff is of never ceasing interest 
to the American people.’ (His voice frightened the bear, and it fled up 
the mountain. Turning to the wondering listeners, Allen said): 

“ ‘Ladies and gentlemen, that speech had the same effect on that bear 
that it had on Congress.’ 

“He was a contemporary of Joe Wheeler in Congress. The roll was 
called on a vote of some pending bill while Allen was in the cloakroom. 
Appearing at his seat at the close of the call, the clerk called his name, 
inquiring how he would vote. Allen asked how Gen. Joe Wheeler had 
voted, saying that he had followed General Wheeler through the Civil 
War, and that he had never led him into any trouble. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


533 


What a treasure a book containing his speeches and stories would be. 
Wliile there was a sting, at times, in liis tongue, there was no venom in 
it. His heart was a well-spring of kindliness; there was no bitterness in 
it. While he will be remembered long for his unexcelled wit and humor, 
in truth he was a lawyer of high attainments, a safe legislator, broad 
in his views on public questions, conservative and dependable.” 

—A reminiscence^ Nov. 1, 1917, by Judge Jno. F. Phillips. 


AUSTIN ABBOTT ON SUCCESS IN LAW 

“One of the most important points for a lawyer is the improvement of 
his own mental habits or methods. Much of the young lawyer’s work is 
necessarily broken, desultory. It is of great importance to his ultimaJte 
success that he should not allow this circumstance to interfere with the 
system and thoroughness of the knowledge which he acquires in the course 
of his experience. The most useful suggestion I could make upon this 
point is, that he should make it a rule to learn at least one thing thoroughly 
every day, and if passing time does* not afford opportunity, reserve the 
question until the most convenient occasion, so that as he goes on with 
month after month of experience he wall not leave behind him a fog of 
doubts and uncertainties, and having in his mind the illusory form of 
supposed knowledge. He should read constantly—though not much—the 
best authorities, and to learn to discriminate between those which 
command respect and those which do not. Careful discrimination and 
analysis are of great importance. The most frequent error in law, and 
the one which misleads practitioners more than any other, is the habit 
of too broad generalization and the disposition to assume that a general 
principle can safely be apphed to a particular case without careful analysis 
and discrimination, both as to the scope and limits of the principle and 
as to the elements of fact involved in the case. No suggestions, however, 
as to analytical methods will be of substantial service without that good 
judgment, both of affairs and of men, which comes from sound common 
sense applied to the technical knowledge of authorities or of astuteness or 
fertility in resources of practice will compensate for the lack of well bal¬ 
anced good sense. System of some kind in dealing with every litigation 
or every title to be examined is requisite. Any system is better than no 
system. The student should learn to know where to begin and when 
he has covered the ground. Almost every case brought to the attention 
of the lawyer is like a chain which can be no stronger than the weakest 
link, and he must learn the art of linking not at haphazard at one link 
or another, as it may strike his attention, but proceed systematically 
from one end to the other, testing every point. Long experience enables 
gifted counsel to acquire a sort of intuition by which, almost at a glance, 
the finger is put upon a crucial question; but the art of acquiring this 
ability, so far as it can be acquired, is in early finding and adopting some 
system of which examination and preparation may be methodically 
applied.” 

. —Letter to N. Y. Herald, March 8, 1891. Mr. Austin Abbott is 
America’s greatest legal writer. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS (1811-1884), Massachusetts 

AGITATION 


“If the Alps, piled in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem of Des¬ 
potism, the ever restless ocean is ours, which girt within the eternal laws 
of gravitation is pure only because never still.” 

— Wendell Phillips—From Speech on Public Opinion^' 

John McSweeney: “John McSweeney’s arguments, in quality, 
take rank with some of the great historic jury efforts.” — W. Phillips. 

SIR ROBERT PEEL AND DANIEL WEBSTER 

“Take Sir Robert Peel and Daniel Webster as measures and exaniples; 
two great men, remarkably alike. Neither of them ever had an original 
idea. (Laughter.) Neither kept long any idea he borrowed. Both borrowed 
from any quarter, high or low, north or south, friend or enemy. Both 
were weathercocks, not winds; creatures, not creators. Yet Peel died 
England’s idol—the unquestioned head of the statesmen of the age; 
Webster, the disgraced and bankrupt chief of a broken and ruined party. 
Why? Examine the difference. Webster borrowed free trade of Cal¬ 
houn, and tariff of Clay; took his constitutional principles from Marshall, 
his constitutional learning from Story, and his doctrine of treason from 
George Ticknor Curtis (laughter); and he followed Channing and Gar¬ 
rison a little way, then turned doughface in the wake of Douglas and 
Davis (applause and a few hisses); at first, with Algernon Sidney (my 
blood boils yet as I think how I used to declaim it), he believed the best 
legacy he could leave his children was free speech and the example of 
using it; then of Preston S. Brooks and Legree he took lessons in smothering 
discussion and hunting slaves. In 1820, when the world was asleep, 
he rebuked the slave-trade; in 1850, when the battle was hottest, he let 
Everett omit from his works all his best anti-slavery utterances.” 

—From lecture on ^Idols/ Boston, Oct. 4, 1859. 

DISUNION 

“Mr. Seward says, ‘The first object of every human society is safety;’ 

I think the first duty of society is justice. Alexander Hamilton said, 
‘Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.’ If 
any other basis of-safety or gain were honest, it would be impossible. 
‘A prosperous iniquity,’ says Jeremy Taylor, ‘is the most unprofitable 
condition in the world.’ The nation which in moments when great moral 
que^stions disturb its peace consults first for its own safety is 
atheist and coward, and there are three chances out of four that it 
will end by being a knave. We were not sent into the world to plant 
cities, to make Unions or save them. Seeing that all men are born equal, 
our first civil duty is to see that our laws treat them so. The convulsion 
of this hour is the effort of the nation to do this, its duty, while politicians 
and parties strive to balk it of its purpose. The nation agonizes this 
hour to recognize man as man, forgetting color, condition, sex and creed. 
Our Revolution earned us only independence. Whatever our fathers 
meant, the chief lesson of that hour was that America belongs to America. 
That generation learned it thoroughly; the second inherited it as a preju¬ 
dice; we, the third, have our bones and blood made of it. When thought 
passes through purpose into character, it becomes the unchangeable 
basis of national fife. That Revolutionary lesson need never be learned 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


535 


again, and will never die out. Let a British fleet, with admirals of the 
blue and red, cover our Atlantic coast, and in ten days Massachusetts 
and Carolina will stand shoulder to shoulder; the only rivalry who shall 
die nearest the foe.” 

—From a lecture at Music Hall, Boston, Jan. 20, 1861. 

CIVILIZATION PRODUCES WANT 

“It is enough to state the general principle, that civiUzation produces 
want. Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines intellect. 
The keener the want, the lustier the growth. The power to use new truths 
in science, new ideals in morals or art, obliterates rank, and makes the 
lowest man useful or necessary to the State. Popes and kings no longer 
mark the ages; but Luther and Raphael, Fulton and Faust, Howard and 
Rousseau. A Massachusetts mechanic. Eh Whitney, made cotton king; 
a Massachusetts printer, WiUiam Lloyd Garrison, has undermined its 
throne. Thus civihzation insures equality. Types are the fathers of 
democrats.” 

— ^Progress'—a lecture in Music Hall, Boston, Feb. 17, 1861. 


THE LOST ARTS 

‘T perhaps might venture to claim that it was a medicine for what is 
the most objectionable feature of our national character, and that is 
self-conceit—an undue appreciation of our achievements, of our inven¬ 
tions, of our contributions to popular comfort and of our place, in fact, 
in the great procession of the ages. We seem to imagine that whether 
knowledge will die with us or not, it certainly began with us. We have a 
pitying estimate, a tender pity for the narrowness, ignorance and dark¬ 
ness of the bygone ages. We seem to ourselves not only to monopolize, 
but to have begun the era of light. In other words, we are all running over 
with a fourth of July spirit of self-conceit. I am often reminded of the 
German whom the English poet Coleridge met at Frankfort. He always 
took off his hat with profound respect when he ventured to speak of him¬ 
self. It seems to me the American people might be painted in the chronic 
attitude of taking off its hat to itself, and therefore it can be no waste 
of time with an audience in such a mood to take their eyes for a moment 
from the present civilization and guide them back to the earliest possible 
era that history describes for us; if it were only for the purpose of asking 
whether we boast on the right line. I might despair of curing us of the 
habit of boasting, but I might direct it better! 

“Well, I have been criticised, year after year, for this endeavor to open 
up the claims of old times. I have been charged with repeating useless 
fables with no foundation. Today I take the mere subject of glass. This 
material, Pliny says, was discovered by accident: some sailors, landing 
on the eastern coast of Spain, took their cooking utensils and supported 
them on the sand by the stones that they found in the neighborhood; 
they kindled tlieir fire, cooked the fish, finished the meal, and removed 
the apparatus, and glass was found to have resulted from the niter and 
sea sand, vitrified by the heat.” 

—Delivered by Wendell Phillips, in Steinway Hall, N. Y. 


C. F. M. PICKARD (1868- ), Washington 

THE SAME 

(Chaplains of every faith who ministered to the dying virtually obliter¬ 
ated denominational lines on the battlefields of France). 

“Hank Jones belonged to the Y. M. C. A. 

Tim Burke to the K. of C. 

Abe Meyer grew in the Ghetto way, 

Where his race, at least, was free. 

These marched away with a private’s rank, 

To a Hell of blood and fire; 

Tim was in front, with Yankee Hank, 

And both were with Abe Meyer. 

Each with his shrine and a different creed; 

All methods of worship true, ^ 

But they fought as one for the world’s great need. 

And the old ‘Red, White and Blue.’ 

They messed together, and hand-to-hand 
With hearts that beat as one. 

They marched together to ‘No Man’s Land,’ 

To grapple the hideous Hun. 

‘ Their altar rails were far apart. 

On methods they couldn’t agree; 

But they took their place with a fighting heart. 

To battle for you and me. 

Each heard the prayer in that boom and blare 
Of minister, rabbi or priest. 

And they stood up square, they did their share 
To strangle the Berlin beast. 

“The ‘gas’ got Abe—then Hank and Tim 
Heard the Chaplain pray for the Jew; 

Then Tim went ‘West;’ Hank’s eyes were dim. 

But a rabbi prayed Tim through. 

Hank went ‘over the top’ to the glory side. 

But he did not die in sin; 

For he was absolved the night he died. 

By kind-faced Father O’Flynn. 

“The God that welcomed and met all three 
Where the souls of brave men stay. 

Was the God of Abe, and Tim’s K. of C., 

And Hank’s Y. M. C. A.’’ 

— Written by Mr. Pickard, Nov. 19, 1918, formerly a Kansas 
City, Mo., lawyer, now of Spokane, Wash. 


EDWARDS PIERREPONT (1817-1892), New York 


DANCING 

“You may be invited to a ball or a dinner, because you dance or tell 
a story, but no one since Queen Elizabeth’s time has been made a cabinet 
minister or a Lord Chancellor for such, reasons.” 

—Edward S. Pierrepont—Advice to son upon entering Oxford. 

Born at North Haven, Conn.; graduated at Yale, 1837; and after 
practicing law a few years at Columbus, 0., settled in N. Y., 1845, where 
he soon took high rank at the bar. He was judge of the superior court, 
1857-60, member of the State constitutional convention, 1867, district 
attorney of the U. S., 1867-70, attorney-general of the U. S., 1875-76, 
and minister to Great Britain, 1876-77. He was a member of the com¬ 
mittee of seventy which fought the “Tweed ring.” 


WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER—NO ROOM FOR QUACKS 
IN THE LAW 

“There is no calling in which charlatanism and quackery or anything 
merely advantitious counts for as little as in the legal profession, or in 
which real merit is surer in the end of its final reward. No young man of 
fair natural ability, possessing good health, sound principles, a willing¬ 
ness to work and the faculty for availing of opportunity need be alarmed 
at the number of lawyers with whom he must compete. If the require¬ 
ments are severe the chance of success is so much the better to the aspir¬ 
ant who can meet them. There is, however, a tendency to overestimate 
the legal profession as a means of acquisition, and greatly to exaggerate 
the gains of lawyers. They are given a financial rating for which there 
is no warrant. A professional income may be the equivalent in figures 
of the interest on a very considerable sum of money, but in reality is 
all capital, largely consumed in the expense of earning it and in the support 
it affords to the earner and his family, if he has one. Professional men 
are too often expected and too often undertake to compete in style of 
living and scale of expenditures with business men whose resources 
survive their death or outlast their ability to work, while a lawyer’s 
gains represent nothing more stable than his individual capacity for labor. 
All this indicates a false standard in regard to this as in so many incidents 
of our social economy, to be gradually corrected by common sense in 
the profession and outside of it.”— To N. Y. Herald, March 8, 1891. 


BURKE 

“When I look into my own mind and find its best lights and principles 
fed from that immense magazine of moral and political wisdom which he 
has left as an inheritance to mankind for their instruction, I feel myself 
repelled, by an awful and grateful sensibility, from petulantly approach¬ 
ing him.”— Erskine on ^^The Present War with France.” 




WILLIAM PINKNEY (1764-1822), Maryland 

CONSTRUCTIVE TREASON 

“Gracious God! In the nineteenth century to talk of constructive 
treason! Is it possible that'to this favored land—this last asylum of 
liberty—blest with all that can render a nation happy at home and re¬ 
spectable abroad—this should be law? No, I stand up as a man to rescue 
my country from this reproach. (Judge Duvall, one of the judges before 
whom the argument was made, had decided that Hodge’s delivery 
of prisoners to the enemy was treason. Mr. Pinkney appeared for the 
accused, Mr. Hodges.) I say there is no color for this slander upon our 
jurisprudence. Had I thought otherwise, I would have asked mercy, 
not for law. I would have sent my client to the feet of the President, 
not have brought him, with bold defiance, to confront his accusers, and 
demand your verdict. He could have had a nolle 'prosequi. I confirmed 
him in his resolution not to ask it. Under these circumstances, I may claim 
some respect for my opinion. My opportunities for forming a judgment 
upon this subject, I am compelled to say, by the strange turn which this 
cause has taken, are superior to those of the Chief Justice. I say nothing 
of the knowledge which long study and extensive practice enabled me to 
bring to the consideration of the case. I rely upon this: my opinion 
has not been hastily formed since the commencement of this trial. It 
is the result of a deliberate examination of all the authorities, of a thorough 
investigation of the law of treason in all its forms, made at leisure and under 
a deep sense of a fearful responsibihty for my client. It depends upon me 
whether he should submit Mmself to your justice, or use with the Chief 
Magistrate the intercession of the grand jury, which could not have failed 
to have been successful. You are charged with his life and honor, because 
I assured him that the law was a pledge for the security of both. I de¬ 
clared to him that I would stake my own life upon the safety of his; 
and I declare to you now, that you have as much power to shed the blood 
of the advocate as to harm the client whom he defends. * * * The opinion 
which the Chief Justice has just delivered is not, and I thank God for it, 
the law of the land.” 

—Extract from Pinkney's argument in U. S. v. Hodges, 2 Wheeler's 
Cr. Cases, J77, in United States Circuit at Baltimore, 1815. Mar¬ 
shall pronounced Pinkney the greatest legal reasoner he ever heard; 
‘^Led away the understanding," said Judge Story; “Has enlarged 
my admiration of the capacity of the human mind," added Rufus King. 

THE WAR OF 1812 

“As the war was forced upon us by a long series of unexampled aggres¬ 
sions, it would be absolute madness to doubt that peace will receive a 
cordial welcome, if she returns without ignominy in her train, and with 
security in her hand. The destinies of America are commercial, and her 
true policy is peace; but the substance of peace had, long before we had, 
long before we were roused to a tardy resistance, been denied to us by 
the ministry of England; and the shadow which had been left to mock 
our hopes and to delude our imaginations resembled too much the frown¬ 
ing spectre of war to deceive anybody. Every sea had witnessed, and 
continued to witness, the systematic persectuion of our trade and the 
unrelenting oppression of our people. The ocean had ceased to be the 
safe highway of the neutral world; and our citizens traversed it with 
all the fears of a benighted traveler, who trembles along a road beset 
with banditti, or infested by the beasts of the forest. The government 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


539 


thus urged and goaded drew the sword with visible reluctance; and 
true to the pacific policy which kept it so long in the scabbard it will 
sheathe it again when Great Britain shall consult her own interest by 
consenting to forbear in future the wrongs of the past.” 

INTENSE APPLICATION AND DESIRE FOR APPLAUSE 

“Pinkney’s main qualities seem to have been his power of intense 
application, and his desire for applause. It was his intense application 
to his law books that made him the most learned man of his time, both 
as to ‘black-letter’ common law, present day commercial law, and inter¬ 
national and public law. It was his intense application to the study of 
the Enghsh language, including the classical sources from which so much 
of our English is drawn, that gave him bis copious diction and appropri¬ 
ate use of figures of speech, and made him, perhaps, the most eloquent 
man of his age. These are the qualities that make him show up behind the 
haze of the intervening years almost more than human.” 

— Alfred Salem Niles, 2 ^Great Am. Lawyers,' 21k- 

EGOTISTIC 

“He would never allow that anyone was his superior in anything; 
in field sports, in music, in drawing, and especially in oratory, in which 
his great ambition rested. He considered the late Chief Justice Parsons 
and himself the only men in America who had thoroughly studied and 
understood ‘Coke on Littleton.’ ” — Niles, 2 ^Great American Lawyers', 215. 

JUDGE TANEY’S ESTIMATE 

“Pinkney was a profound lawyer in every department of the science, 
as well as a powerful and eloquent debater. He always saw the strongest 
point of the case, and he put forth his whole strength to support it, and 
enforced it by analogies from other branches of the law. He never with¬ 
drew the attention of the Court from the point by associating with it 
more questionable propositions obviously untenable. He seemed to 
regard such arguments as evidence of a want of legal knowledge of the 
speaker; and when replying to them he took particular pleasure in assail¬ 
ing weaker points and dwelling on them by a tone and manner that 
sometimes made the adversary ashamed of them, and sometimes provoked 
his resentment.”— Roger B. Taney, in ^Tyler's Memoirs,' 69. 

ESTIMATE OF RUFUS CHOATE 

“Pinkney’s great original endowment was his legal mind. He had as 
fine a legal head as was ever grown in America, and perhaps, some would 
say the fullest and of the broadest dimensions. His rhetoric was all put 
on. It was got up late in life, and was a magnificent and labored costume, 
solely created to display his law. He is always more or less stilted and 
far-fetched; but he made his bursts tell; they were successful then, 
whatever we may think in now reading them; and success is the true 
test of oratoric composition. There were, however, in his works two dis¬ 
tinct strata; one his diction, his varied, comprehensive, admirable and 
discriminating words; and his figures and chaotic confusion of metaphor. 
The former, his words, he learned by a most perfect study of literature 
and the best speakers of England, and I hold lus diction to be in the first 
rank for the purposes of the orator. (He conned over dictionaries, too, 
most arduously.) But the latter, his figures, his Minerva brandishing 
the spear, his Juno, etc., etc., I never thought much of. Upon the case 
of the Nereide, though, I think the Supreme Court were clearly wrong, 
and he as clearly right.”— Parker's Reminiscences, 256. 


540 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


HEAD OF AMERICAN BAR TILL DEATH 

“Pinkney was the undisputed head of the Bar until his death, in 1822. 
Thereafter, Webster overshadowed all others in the importance of the 
cases argued, and in the mastery of the great principles of constitutional 
law; although he had close rivals in Wirt, and Littleton Walker Tazewell, 
of Virginia, and in the number of cases, he was excelled by David B. Ogden 
of New York.” — WarrerCs Hist. Am. Bar, 367-8. 

FITTED HIS CARRIAGE WITH BOOKS 

“In order to save time during his long journeys, he had his traveling 
carriage fitted up with book-shelves, after the manner of Napoleon in 
liis campaigns, and always carried with him a select legal library. He 
would enter his carriage at Baltimore, and while driving to Annapolis, 
prepare his case and be ready to argue it before the Court of Appeals 
as soon as he arrived. Having finished his business at Annapolis, he would 
drive to Washington, studying all the way, and be ready to argue his 
case before the Supreme Court.”— Eugene L. Didder, 3 Green Bag, 313. 

JAMES FORD RHODES’ ESTIMATE 

“Pinkney has served his country abroad with ability and honor, but 
had won his greatest renown at the bar. When Daniel Webster came to 
Washington to practice in the Supreme Court, Pinkney was the acknowl¬ 
edged leader of American lawyers, and this surpassing eminence he held 
to the day of his death, although his position began to be shaken after 
the Boston lawyer had made the great argument in the Dartmouth College 
case. Perhaps a perception of Webster’s growing power and future rank 
led Pinkney to say that he did not desire to live a moment after the 
standing he had acquired at the bar was lost, or even brought into doubt 
or question. (Wheaton’s Life of Pinkney, 179.) This great lawyer was as 
vain of a handsome face, accomplished manners, and an elegant dress as 
he was proud of his legal acumen. Clad in the extreme of fashion, he 
preferred to be regarded an idle and polished man of society rather than 
to be looked upon as what he really was, an unwearied student. (‘Pink¬ 
ney, a large, handsome man and remarkable for his somewhat foppish 
dress, wearing a white waistcoat, and white top-boots,’ 2 ‘Recollections 
of a Lifetime,’ by S. G. Goodrich, 399.) Always preparing his speeches 
with the utmost care, writing out the showy passages and learning them 
by heart. (‘A member of Monroe’s cabinet told me that he heard 
Pinkney, about 5 o’clock of a winter morning, reciting and committing 
to memory, in his room, the peroration of a plea, which he heard delivered 
the same day before the Supreme Court,’ ‘Goodrich’s Recollections,’ 
398, note.) He rehearsed in private the appropriate gestures and rheto¬ 
rical points he sought to convey the notion that he spoke on the spur of 
the moment.”— 1 Jas. Ford Rhodes' Hist. U. S., 3d- 

THE TEETOTUM OF TIME 

“Again, if we are to entertain these hopeful abstractions, and to 
resolve all establishments into their imaginary elements in order to recast 
them upon some Utopian plan, and if it be true that all the men in a 
republican government must help to wield its power and be equal in rights, 
I beg leave to ask the honorable gentleman from New Hampshire, and 
why not all the women? They, too, are God’s creatures, and not only 
very fair, but very rational creatures; and our great ancestor, if we are 
to give credit to Milton, accounted the ‘wisest, virtuest, disereetest, 
best;’ although to say the truth, he had but one specimen from which 
to draw his conclusion, and possibly if he had had more would not have 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


541 


drawn it at all. They have, moreover, acknowledged civil rights in abun¬ 
dance, and, upon abstract principles, more than their masculine rulers 
allow them in fact. We have all read of Elizabeth of England, of Catherine 
of Russia, of Semiramis, and Zenobia, and a long list of royal and imperial 
dames, alDout as good as an equal list of royal and imperial lords. Why 
is it that their exclusion from the power of popular government is not 
destructive of its republican character? I do not address this question 
to the honorable gentleman’s gallantry, but to his abstraction and liis 
theories and his notions of the infinite perfectability of human institu¬ 
tions, borrowed from Godwin and the turbulent philosophers of Prance. 
For my own part, sir, if I may have leave to say so much, in the presence 
of this mixed, uncommon audience, I confess "l am no friend to female 
government, that is we have all of us, as I suspect, at some time or other 
experienced. But if the ultra republican doctrines which have now been 
broached should ever gain ground among us, I should not be surprised 
if some romantic reformer, treading in the footsteps of Mrs. Wollston- 
craft, should propose to repeal our republican Salique Law, and claim 
for our wives and daughters a full participation in political power, and 
to add to it that domestic power, which in some families, as I have 
heard, is as absolute and republican as any power can be.” 

—From Speech on the Missouri Compromise, in U. S. Senate, 1820. 

GEORGE TICKNOR’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“After a few moments, pause they proceeded in the case in which 
Dexter, Pinkney, and Emmett were counsel. It was a high treat, I 
assure you, to hear these three great lawyers in one cause. Pinkney 
opened it as junior counsel to Emmett; and it was some time before I 
was to be reconciled to his manner as to be able to attend properly to 
his argument. His person, dress, and style of speaking are so different 
from anything which I ever saw before that I despair of being able to 
give you an idea of him by description or comparison. 

“You must imagine, if you can, a man formed on nature’s most liberal 
scale, who, at the age of fifty, is possessed with the ambition of being a 
pretty fellow, wears corsets to diminish his bulk, uses cosmetics, as he 
told Mrs. Gore, to smooth and soften his skin growing somewhat wrinkled 
and rigid with age, and dresses in a style which would be thought foppish 
in a much younger man. You must imagine such a man standing before 
the gravest tribunai in the land, and engaged in causes of the deepest 
moment; but still apparently thinking how he can declaim like a practiced 
rhetorician in the London cockpit, wliich he used to frequent. Yet, 
you must at the same time, imagine liis declamation to be chaste and 
precise in its language, and cogent, logical, and learned in its argument, 
free from the artifice and affectation of his manner, and, in short, opposite 
to what you might fairly have expected from his first experience and tones. 
And when you have compounded these inconsistencies in your imagina¬ 
tion and united qualities which on common occasions nature seems to 
hold asunder, you will, perhaps, begin to form some idea of what Mr. 
Pinkney is. 

“He spoke about an hour, and was followed by Mr. Dexter who, with 
that cold severity which seems peculiarly his o^vn, alluded to the circum¬ 
stances of his being left alone (his coadjutor not having come) to meet 
two such antagonists; then went on to admit all that Mr. Pinkney had 
said and to show that it had nothing to do with the case at hand, and 
finally concluded by setting up an acute, and, as I suppose it will prove, 
a successful defense. 

“Mr. Emmett closed the cause in a style different from either of his 
predecessors. He is more advanced in life than they are; but he is yet 
older in sorrows than in years. There is an appearance of premature 
age in his person, and of a settled melancholy in his countenance, which 


542 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


may be an index to all that we know of himself and family. At any rate, 
it wins your interest before he begins to speak. He was well possessed 
of his cause, and spoke with a heartiness which showed that he desired to 
serve his client rather than to display himself. He was more bold and free 
in his language, yet, perhaps, equally exact and perspicuous; and if Mr. 
Pinkney was more formally logical, and Mr. Dexter more coldly cogent, 
Mr. Emmett was more persuasive. When he had finished, I was surprised 
to find that he had interested me so much that, if he had not stopped, 
I should have lost my dinner.” 

—From letter of Geo. Ticknor, from Wash., D. C., Feb., 1815. 

WM. PINKNEY, A GREAT REASONER IN THE LAW 

“Pinkney’s favorite mode of reasoning was frorn the analogies of the 
law, tracing up its technical rules to their original principles and historical 
sources. He followed the precept given by Pliny, and sowed his arguments 
broad-cast, amplifying them by every variety of illustration of which the 
subject admitted, and deducting from them a connected series of proposi¬ 
tions and corollaries, gaining in beautiful gradations on the mind and 
linked together by an adamantine chain of reasoning. Of the extent 
and solidity of his legal attainments, it will be difficult to speak in ade¬ 
quate terms, without the appearance of exaggeration. He was profoundly 
versed in the ancient learning of the common law, its technical pecu¬ 
liarities and feudal origin. Its subtle distinctions and artificial logic were 
familiar to his early studies and enabled him to expound with admirable 
force and perspicuity the rules of real property. He was familiar with 
every branch of commercial law, and superadded, at a later period of 
his life, to his other legal attainments, an extensive acquaintance with 
the principles of public law and the practice of the prize courts. In 
his legal studies he preferred the original text writers and reporters to 
all these digests, abridgments, and elementary treatises which lend so 
many convenient helps and facilities to the modem lawyer, but which 
he considers as adapted to form sciolists and^ to encourage indolence 
and superficial habits of investigation. His favorite law book was 
Coke-Littleton, which he had read many times. Its principal texts 
were treasured up in his memory and his arguments at the bar abounded 
with the perpetual recurrences to the principles and analogies drawn 
from the rich mine of common-law learning.” 

—6 Jared Sparks' American Biography, 72-3. 


SURETYSHIP 

“Almost all who sign as surety,” says Chief Justice Appleton, of Maine, 
“have occasion to remember the proverb of Solomon: ‘He that is surety 
for a stranger, shall smart for it, and he that hateth suretyship is sure.’ 
But they are nevertheless held liable upon their contracts, otherwise 
there would be no smarting, and the proverb would fall.” 

— Mayor. Hutchinson, 57 Me., 5k7. 



WILLIAM C. PLUNKET (1764-1854), Ireland 

THE STATUTES OF LIMITATION 

“If time destroys the evidence of title, the laws have wisely and humane¬ 
ly made length of possession a substitute for that which has been de¬ 
stroyed. He comes with his scythe in one hand to mow down the muni¬ 
ments of our rights; but in his other hand the law-giver has placed an 
hom-glass, by which he metes out incessantly those portions of duration 
which render needless the evidence that he has swept away.” 

Was Attorney-General for Ireland, 1805; member of the English 
House of Commons, 1807; again as a member for Dublin University, 
1812-22; Chief-Justice of Ireland, 1827; Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 
1830-41. 

Plunket was, a great chancery lawyer, holding the same position in 
Ireland that Romilly held in England. 

ANTI-UNIONIST 

“For my part, I will resist it (the Union) to the last gasp of my exist¬ 
ence, and with the last drop of my blood; and when I feel the hour of my 
dissolution approaching, I will, like the father of Hannibal, take my 
children to the altar, and swear them to eternal hostility against the 
invaders of their country’s freedom.”—7n the Union Debates, 1800. 

THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS 

“Walking before the sacred images of the illustrious dead, as in a 
public and solemn procession, shall we not dismiss all party feeling, all 
angry passions, all unworthy prejudices? I will not talk of past disputes; 
I will not mingle in this act of national justice anything that can awaken 
personal animosity.” 

ADDRESSING SPEAKER ABBOTT 

“But you, sir, while you were binding the vreath round the brow of 
the Conqueror (the Duke of Wellington), assured him that his victo¬ 
rious followers must never expect to participate in the fruits of their 
valor, but that they who had shed their blood in achieving the conquest 
were the only persons who were never to share the profits of success in 
the rights of citizens.” 

—On the Catholic Question, one of his incidental sarcasms, in 18H. 
PLUNKET’S STANDING AT THE BAR 

“Of all the eminent lawyers I have heard, Plunket seemed to me to 
be the most admirably qualified for the department of the profession 
in which he shines. His mind is at once subtle and comprehensive: 
his learning clear, copious and condensed; his powers of reasoning are 
altogether wonderful. Give him the most complicated and doubtful 
case to support, with an array of apparently hostile decisions to oppose 
him at every step—the previous discussion of the question has probably 
satisfied you that the arguments of his antagonists are neither to be 
answered nor evaded; they have fenced round the right of their clients 
with all the great names in equity—Hardwieke, Camden, Thurlow, 
Eldon. Mr. Plunket rises, you are deeply attentive; rather from curiosity 


544 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


to witness a display of hopeless dexterity than from any uncertainty 
about the event. He commences by some general undisputed principle 
of law that seems, perhaps, at first view, not to bear the remotest relation 
to the matter in controversy; but to this he appends another and another 
and another, until by a regular series of connected propositions he brings 
it down to the very point before the court; and insists, nay demonstrates, 
that the court cannot decide against him without violating one of his 
own most venerated maxims. Nothing can be more masterly than the 
manner in which all this is done. * * * But Lords Hardwicke, 
Thurlow, Camden, Eldon, etc., are said to be against him. The advocate 
accordingly proceeds to examine each of these authoiities in detail; 
he analyses their language; by distinctions that seem natural and obvious 
but which really are most subtle, he shows how capable it is of various 
interpretations; he confronts the construction contended for by con¬ 
flicting decisions of the same judges on other and similar occasions; 
he points out unsuspected anomalies that would arise from adopting the 
interpretation of his adversaries, and equally unexpected accordances 
with general principles that would follow his own. He thus goes on until, 
by reiterated processes of matchless sagacity, he has either neutralized 
or brought over to support himself all the authorities upon which his 
opponents most firmly relied; and he sits down, leaving the court, if not 
a convert to his opinion, at least grievously perplexed to detect and explain 
the fallacies upon which it rests.” 

—1 ShieVs Sketches of the Irish Bar, 103-6. 

MACKINTOSH ON PLUNKET’S ORATORY 

“The late Sir James Mackintosh, who had heard all the great orators, 
from Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, and Fox, to Brougham, Canning, Shiel, and 
Macaulay, repeatedly said that if Plunket had been regularly trained 
in a British House of Commons he would have been the greatest speaker 
there that he had ever remembered.” 

—1 ShieVs ^Sketches of the Irish Bar,’ 111. 

ON THE IRISH PARLIAMENT 

“Sir, I, in the most express terms, deny the competency of Parlia¬ 
ment to abolish the Legislature of Ireland. I warn you, do not dare to 
lay your hand on the Constitution. I tell you that if, circumstanced as 
you are, you pass an act which surrenders the government of Ireland to 
the English Parliament, it will be a nullity, and that no man in Ireland 
will be bound to obey it. I make the assertion deliberately, I repeat 
it, and I call on any man who hears me to take down my words; you have 
not been elected for that purpose; you are appointed to make laws, and 
not legislatures; you are appointed to act under the Constitution, not to 
alter it; you are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators, and not 
to transfer them; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the govern¬ 
ment; you resolve society into its original elements, and no man in the 
land is bound to obey you. 

“Sir, I state doctrines which are not merely the opinions of the ablest 
men who have written on the science of government, but I state the 
practice of our Constitution, as settled at the era of the Revolution, and 
I state the doctrine under which the House of Hanover derives its title 
to the throne. Has the King a right to transfer his crown? Is he compe¬ 
tent to annex it to the crown of Spain, or of any other country? No, but 
he may abdicate it; and every man who knows the Constitution knows 
the consequence, the right reverts to the next in succession; if they all 
abdicate, it reverts to the people. The man who questions this doctrine 
in the same breath must arraign the sovereign on the throne as an usurper. 
Are you competent to transfer your legislative rights to the French Coun¬ 
cil of five-hundred? Are you competent to transfer them to the British 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


545 


Parliament? I answer, No. When you transfer you abdicate, and 
the great original trust reverts to the people from whom it issued. Your¬ 
selves you may extinguish, but Parliament you cannot extinguish; it is 
enthroned in the hearts of the people; it is enshrined in the sanctuary 
of the Constitution; it is as immortal as the Island which it protects. 
As well might the fanatic suicide hope that the act which destroys 
his miserable body would extinguish his eternal soul. Again, I therefore 
warn you, do not dare to lay your hands on the Constitution; it is above 
your power. Sir, I do not say that the Parliament and the people by 
mutual consent and co-operation may not change the form of the Con¬ 
stitution. Whenever such a case arises it must be decided on its own 
merits, but that is not this ease. If government considers this a 
reason peculiarly fitted for experiments on the Constitution, they may 
call on the people. I ask you, are you ready to do so? Are you ready 
to abide the event of such an appeal? What is it you must, in that 
event submit to the people? Not this particular project; for if you dis¬ 
solve the present form of government, they become free to choose any 
other; you fling them to the fury of the tempest; you must call on them 
to unhouse themselves of the established Constitution, and to fashion 
to themselves another. I ask again, is this the time for an experiment 
of that nature? 

“Thank God, the people have manifested no such wish, so far as they 
ha’^ e spoken, their voice is decidedly against this daring innovation. 
You know that no voice has been uttered in its favor, and you cannot 
be infatuated enough to take confidence from the silence which preyails 
in some parts of the kingdom; if you know how to appreciate that silence 
it is more formidable than the most clamorous opposition. You may be 
rived and shivered by the lightning, before you hear the peal of the thunder! 
But, sir, we are told that we should discuss this question with calmness 
and composure. I am called on to surrender my birthright and my 
honor, and I am told I should be calm, composed. 

“National pride! Independence of our country! These, we are told 
by the Minister, are only vulgar topics, fitted for the meridian of the mob, 
but unworthy to be mentioned in such an enlightened assembly as this; 
they are trinkets and gewgaws fit to catch the fancy of childish and 
unthinkable people like you, sir, or like your predecessor in that chair, 
but utterly unworthy the consideration of this House, or of the matured 
understanding of the noble lord who condescends to instruct it! Gracious 
God, we see a Perry reascending from the tomb, and raising his awful 
voice to warn us against the surrender of our freedom; and we see that 
the proud and virtuous feelings which warmed the breast of that aged 
and venerable man, are only calculated to excite the contempt of this 
young philosopher, who has been transplanted from the nursery to the 
cabinet, to outrage the feelings and understanding of the country.” 

THE COURT “SITS” AND THE ACTION “LIES” 

“Plunket, while pleading one day, observing the hour to be late, said 
it was his wish to proceed with the trial if the jury would ‘set.’ ‘Sit,’ 
said the judge, correcting him, ‘not set; hens set.’ ‘I thank you, my 
Lord,’ was the reply. Shortly after that, the judge had occasion to observe 
‘that if such were the case, he feared the action would not ‘lay.’ ‘Lie, 
my Lord,’ said the barrister, ‘not lay; hens lay.’ ” 

—Frederick Saunders, 'Salad for the Solitary and the Social,' J^SO. 

“NOTHING TO DO,” AND EQUAL TO IT 

After quitting the Common Pleas, in 1827, to take the Great Seal, 
Plunket was told that his successors had little or nothing to do. “Well,” 
said he, “they are equal to it.” 


546 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


WOULDN’T THROW UP SEALS 

On his enforced retirement in 1841, to make way for Lord Campbell, 
a great storm arose on the day of his successor’s expected arrival, a friend 
said, how sick of his promotion the voyage must have made him. “Yes,” 
said Plunket, with a sardonic smile, “but, it won’t make him throw up the 
seals.” 


GREATNESS OF THE BIBLE 

“The Bible is a book which in spiritual power has no parallel in any 
literature with which I have had any acquaintance. Nowhere have I 
found such brief and comprehensive summary of all moral obligations 
as in the Ten Commandments; nowhere such a hymn of praise to the 
Creator as in the first chapter of Genesis; nowhere such a parable of human 
frailty and folly as in the third chapter; nowhere such a vision of God 
in nature as in the 104th Psalm; nowhere such a vision of God in human 
experience in God’s forgiving love as in the 55th chapter of Isaiah.” 

—Lymaii Abbot’s ^Reminiscnces’, (1915), Iflf-S-O. 


WHAT THE BIBLE IS 

“The Bible is not a book but a library; it took, in its formation over a 
thousand years; the books in which it was composed were written in 
different languages, by men of different temperaments, but lived centuries 
apart; in studying and teaching it one must take account of the time in 
which, the people to which, and the temperament of the men of whom 
each book or teaching was uttered. The legal and historical studies 
had further prepared me for the view of the Bible which now modern 
scholarship generally accepts. History is always composed of pre¬ 
existing materials, and these materials are often woven by the writer 
into his narrative. It was not unnatural to suppose that the Bible 
histories were composed in the same manner, and that there incorporated 
in them, along with documents and well-attested legends, some popular 
tales and current folk-lore. I had learned from Sir Henry Maine that the 
origin of law is a general custom; that custom is formulated in specific 
decrees, imperial or legislative; then the decrees are organized into a code.” 

—Lyman Abbott’s 'Reminiscences’, Jf60-1. 


LYMAN ABBOTT’S CREED 

“I had come to the conclusion that there was no future torment either 
long or short, that the day of probation was not on this side of the grave 
but on the other, and that there was no ^ound in Scripture for the belief 
that God’s mercy for any man ended with his earthly life.” 

—Lyman Abbott’s 'Reminiscences’, Jf.72. 





SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK (1845- .), England 


PHILOSOPHY OF THE LAW 

“We have long given up the attempt to maintain that the common law 
is the perfection of reason. Existing human institutions can only do 
their best with the conditions they work in. If they can do that within 
the reasonable margin to be allowed for mistakes and accidents, they are 
justified in their generalization. Even their ideal is relative. What is best 
forgone race or society, at a given stage of civilization, is not necessarily 
best for other races and societies at other stages. We cannot say that one 
set of institutions is in itself better or more reasonable than another, 
except with reference, express or implied, to conditions that are assumed 
either to be universal in human societies, or to be not materially different 
in the particular cases compared. It may perhaps be safe to assume, 
in a general way, that what is reasonable for Massachusetts is reasonable 
for Vermont. It would not be safe to assume that everything reasonable 
for Massachusetts is reasonable for British India, nor, indeed, that within 
British India what will serve for Lower Bengal will equally well serve 
for the northwest frontier. The first right of every system, therefore, is 
to be judged in its own field, by its own methods, and on its own work. 
It cannot be seen at its best, or even fairly, if its leading conceptions are 
forced into conformity with an alien mold. A sure mark of the mere 
handicraftsman is to wonder how foreigners can get on with tools in any 
way different from his own. * * * Development is a process, and 

not a succession of incidents. Environment limits and guides the direction 
of effort; it cannot create the living growth. Hence it seems to follow 
that a system which is vital and really individual either must be resigned 
to remain in some measure inarticulate, or must have some account to 
give of itself that is not merely dogmatic and not merely external history, 
but combines the* rational and the historical element. In other words, 
its aims are not complete^ achieved unless it has a philosophy; and that 
philosophy must be its own.”^—Prow the Young Man and the Law, p. H5-6. 


LORD ELDON’S MOTTO 

Sat cito, si sat hene. “Quick enough, if safe enough.” This motto 
was a favorite maxim with Lord Eldon, who says, “In all I have had to 
do in future life, professional and judicial, I have always felt the effect 
of this early admonition, on the panels of the vehicle which coveyed me 
from school, 'Sat cito, si sat hene.^ — Twiss, 'Life of Eldonf vol. 1, 34^5. 



JOHN K. PORTER (1819-1892), New York 

LEGAL TENDER AND MONEY 

“The substantial issue is on the right to make of the U. S. a legal 
tender. A minor issue is raised as to the power of Congress to declare 
them to be money. That is a question of very trivial moment, as without 
such a declaration they are money by the common recognition of all 
civilized communities. If Congress had failed to make the declaration, 
the omission would be quite immaterial, as the Supreme Court of the 
U. S. had held treasury notes to be money, even before they were made a 
legal tender. 

“But on the great question in the case, whether the government can 
make this money a legal tender, your Honors will not fail to observe 
that the very term ‘legal tender’ imports that the subject is one, by the 
common understanding of mankind, belonging in every sovereignty to 
the law-making power. It has been recognized as such in every cilivized 
nation. Gold and silver have been a legal tender with us. Not so in Great 
Britain. There, except for small sums, it is gold coin or notes of the 
Bank of England. Not so in France. There it is silver coin and govern¬ 
ment paper in periods of public exigency. Our first government coinage 
was copper; of which 300 tons were converted into money, at the mint, 
during the secretaryship of General Hamilton. 

“Doubtless gold and silver and government paper have been generally 
preferred by the law-making powers of the various modern nations. 
That this was not always so, even with them, is illustrated by the fact 
that we have the record in British history of the time when a white woman 
was money, and when a fair-haired Saxon slave boy was a medium of 
commercial exchange, and the subject of tender in payment of civil 
debt; and it is a curious feature of English History, alluded to by Mac¬ 
aulay, that there is no record to be found in the Statutes at large, to this 
day, of the abolition in that country of the institution of human slavery. 

“Whatever, in any country, may happen to be for the time the recog¬ 
nized medium of commerical exchange, whether gold, silver, or govern¬ 
ment paper, it derives its character as legal tender, not from the material 
of which it is composed, but from the imprint of the law-making or 
sovereign power. I may have a chest full of gold bars, but without the 
stamp of government authority it is not a legal tender in payment of 
a debt for a loaf of bread. When a penny of Caesar was brought by a 
disciple to One wiser than man, the inquiry He deemed appropriate was, 
not what metal is this, but, ‘whose image and superscription is this?’ 
It was the recognition by the King of kings, of the authority of human 
laws, and the stamp of national sovereignty.’’ 

—John K. Porter, in Metropolitan Band v. Van Dyck, before the 
Court of Appeals, at Albany, N. Y. June 27, 1862. 

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 

“The Federal Government, in its national relations, is invested with 
the powers of sovereignty. If the Constitution had failed to invest 
it with these, it would, in the language of Chief Justice Marshall, have 
been only a ‘Splendid bauble.’ Mere forms are nothing. Substance is 
everything. It was said by Napoleon, that ‘a throne is a mere block of 
wood covered with velvet.’ A national constitution, which failed to organ¬ 
ize a nation, would be even more unmeaning than the throne stripped of 
its covering.’’ 

The above is from Mr. Porter’s argument in Metropolitan Bank v. Van 
Dyck, N. Y. Court of Appeals, on the constitutionality of the Legal Tender 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


549 


Acts, 27 N. Y., 400 June 27, 1863. He was in the Parish Will Case, the 
Beecher-Tilton case, the Quadruplex telegraph cases, defended Gen. Bab¬ 
cock at St. Louis, Mo., prosecuted Guiteau, for the assassination of Presi¬ 
dent Garfield, refused a $50,000 retainer from William Tweed. 

Says the Albany Law Journal, in 1875: “Evarts, Porter, Beach, 
combined would make the ideal advocate. If we are ever indicted, we 
shall retain Evarts as general manager. Porter to sum up to the jury, 
and Beach to argue the appeal, if we happen to be convicted.” 


ART 

“Art appears to me to be one method of giving outward expression 
to an inward life; philosophy is another method; literature a third; 
nausic a fourth and so on. The expert is always interested in the manner 
in which that life is expressed. If he is a musician, he knows the motifs 
in the opera, recognizes the fugue in the oratorio, delights in the inter¬ 
weaving of the melodies in the canon; if he is a literatuer, he discerns 
the structure of the novel, perceives the artistic development of the ora¬ 
tion, delights in the rythmical pulse-beats of the poem; if he is a logician, 
the process by which the philosopher reaches the conclusion interests 
him, and he rejoices in the strength of the links in the arrangement as 
an iron-worker might in those of a chain; if he is an artist, what impresses 
him is the composition, the tone, the color-harmony, and these are equally 
a delight to him whether the picture is a landscape, or a portrait, or a 
crucifixion. But the non-expert does not see, or cares little, for these 
elements; what interests him is the life expressed, not the method of 
expression. * * * This quality in a picture is what I believe the 

art critics call ‘feeling.’ I think most of us who are not critics judge 
pictures by their ‘feeling.’ To both the picture brings a message; but 
the messages are different; to the art critic it speaks of beauty in form 
and color; to the layman through beauty of form and color it speaks of 
something else. If its only message is beauty in form and color, it does 
not speak to him at all.” 

—Lyman Abbott, 'Impressions of a Careless Traveler', 191-Ji. 

Abbott practiced law 6 years in the 50’s, with his brothers, Austin 
and Benjamin. They wrote several law-books under the name of ‘Ben- 
auly,’ Ben(jamin)—Au(stin)—Ly(man), making the combination name, 
Benauly. — The Author. 


PAST ACTS DO NOT ALWAYS COUNT 

Edward Voight, of Wisconsin, member of Congress, had been praising 
Berger, of Milwaukee, and his friends for supporting the War, etc., when 
Frank L. Greene, representative of the St. Albans district, Vermont, a 
veteran of the Spanish War, and former newspaper man, rose and said: 

“While you are talking about these good people, and what they did 
in the past, do not forget that Judas Iscariot was the treasurer of ^the 
twelve disciples until he committed his one supreme act of infamy.” 




GEORGE D. PRENTICE (1802-1870), Kentucky 


DEATH 

“The fiat of death is inexorable. There is no appeal for relief from the 
great law which dooms us to dust. We flourish and fade as the leaves 
of the forest. The flowers that bloom, wither and fade in a day, have no 
frailer hold upon life than the mightiest monarch that ever shook the earth 
with his footsteps. Generations of men will appear and disappear as the 
grass and the multitude that throng the world today will disappear as 
footsteps on the shore. Men seldom think of the great event of death, 
until the shadow falls across their own pathway, hiding from their eyes 
the faces of loved ones whose living smile was the sunlight of their existence. 
Death is the antagonist of all life, and the thought of the tomb is the 
skeleton of all feasts. We do not want to go through the dark valley 
although the dark passage may lead to Paradise; we do not want to_ go 
down into damp graves even with princes for bed-fellows. In the, beautiful 
drama of Ion the hope of immortality so eloquently uttered by the death- 
devoted Greek, flnds deep response in every thoughful soul. When 
about to yield his life a sacrifice to fate, his Clemanthe asks if they 
should meet again, to which he responds, I have asked that dreadful 
question of the hills that look eternal: of the clear streams that flow 
forever: of stars among whose fields of azure my raised spirits walked in 
glory. All are dumb. But as I gaze upon the living face, I feel that there 
is something in love that mantles through its beauty, that cannot wholly 
perish. We shall meet, again, Clemanthe!” 

Born in Connecticut. Graduated from Brovm University (1823); studied 
law, but never practiced. Moved in 1830 to Ky. and established the 
Louisville “Courier Journal,” of which he resigned the editorship in 1867. 
His writings were published under the title of “Prenticeana.” 


THE MINISTRY THE GREATEST CALLING 

“I might say, that, having been a lawyer, an author, an editor, a secre¬ 
tary, and a pastor, there is no profession which has for me so many 
attractions as the pastorate. The minister has more intimate friends 
than the lawyer, the doctor, or the business man; he deals with men and 
women usually when in their best moods; he preaches to an audience 
which is friendly and sympathetic and which desires a message if he has 
one to give; he can have of, if he will, time and opportunity for study of 
the most fundamental themes, those which concern the building of 
character, both of the individual and of society; and if he has any personal 
consciousness of divine companionship, he has in that consciousness the 
greatest gift to bestow upon his friends which it is possible for one soul 
to bestow upon another.” 

— L'yman Abbotfs ^Reminiscences', 278-9. 



S. S. PRENTISS (1808-1850), Mississippi 


SEARGENT S. PRENTISS’ CONTEST FOR HIS SEAT IN 

CONGRESS 

“You sit here twenty-five sovereign States in judgment on the most 
sacred rights of a sister State, that which is to a State what chastity is 
to a woman, or honor a man. Should you decide against her, you tear 
from her brow the richest jewel which sparkles there, and forever bow her 
head in shame and dishonor. But if your determination is taken, if the 
blow must fall, if the Constitution must bleed, I have but one request 
on her behalf to make: When you decide that she cannot choose her own 
representation, at the same moment blot from the star-spangled banner 
of this Union the bright Star that ghtters to the name of Mississippi, 
but leave the stripe behind, a fit emblem of her degradation.” 

— The peroration of his speech, in contest for his place as Representa¬ 
tive over Claiborne, in the 25th Congress. Upon a vote there was a fie, 
and James K. Polk, the Speaker, voted in the negative, and nnseatcd 
Prentiss. lie announced that he would return to Mississippi and 
contest the election again. He did so, and was triumphantly elected. 

“As a lawyer Prentiss,” says John H. HaU, his biographer, “was a 
barrister pure and simple. The attorney’s work he left to his partners or 
associates. His specialties were the Law of Real Estate and of Wills. 
So well did he know the former, that it was the custom to employ him 
merely to come into court and make a speech. He seldom used books, 
or prepared for such cases, preferring to hear the evidence in the court¬ 
room and speak from knowledge so obtained. The most astonishing 
feats of this kind are remembered of him.” 

—5 Great American Lawyers, flS. 

THE COMMON SCHOOL HOUSE 

“Behold yon single building near the crossing of the village road! 
It is small and of rude construction, but stands in a pleasant and quiet 
spot. A magnificent old elm spreads its broad arms above and seems to 
lean towards it, as a strong man bends to shelter and protect a child. 
A brook runs through the meadow near, and hard by there is an orchard, 
but the trees have suffered much and bear no fruit, except upon the most 
remote and inaccessible branches. Prom within its walls comes a busy 
hum, such as you may hear in a disturbed bee-hive. Now peep through 
yonder window, and you will see a hundred children, with rosy cheeks, 
mischievous eyes and demure faces, and engaged, or pretending to be so, 
in their little lessons. It is the public school, the free, the common school, 
provided by law; open to all: claimed from the community as a right, 
not accepted as a bounty. Here the children of the rich and poor, high 
and low, meet upon perfect equality, and commence under the same 
auspices the race of life. Here the sustenance of the mind is served up to 
all alike, as the Spartans served their food upon the public table. Here 
young Ambition climbs his little ladder, and boyish genius plumes his 
half-fledged wing. From among these laughing children will go forth 
the men who are to control the destinies of their age and country; the 
statesmen whose wisdom is to guide the Senate, the poet who will take 
captive the hearts of the people and bind them together with immortal 
song, the philosopher who, boldly seizing upon the elements themselves, 
will compel them to his wishes, and through new combinations of their 
primal laws, by some great discovery, revolutionize both art and science.” 


552 


GREAT SAYINGS BY ’GREAT LAWYERS 


Prentiss studied the classical dictionary, and said it always came to 
his rescue. N. Wright said after he was admitted to the bar in 1829, 
Prentiss soared like an eagle. He was a great reader of biography and 
history; had little reverence for great men; appeared before the Supreme 
Court of the U. S. at 25; being fined at one time for fighting in court, 
he requested that he be not confined in the same cell with his antagonist. 
His law business at 33, in 1841, was worth at least $25,000 a year. 

ILLUSTRATING THE UNDERSTANDING 

“The truth is, the natural bent of my mind is to dry and pure ra¬ 
tiocination; but finding early that mankind from a petit jury to the highest 
deliberative assembly are more influenced by illustration than by argu¬ 
ment, I have cultivated my imagination in aid of my understanding.” 
—Prentiss to Judge Wilkinson. 

SELF-DEFENSE 

“The principles of self-defense, which pervade all animated nature, 
and act toward life the same part that is performed by the external 
mechanism of the eye toward the delicate sense of vision—affording 
it, on the approach of danger, at the same time, warning and protection— 
do not require that action shall be withheld tiU it can be of no avail. When 
the rattlesnake gives warning of his fatal purpose, the wary traveler 
waits not for the poisonous blow, but plants upon his head his armed heel, 
and crushes out at once ‘his venom and his strength.’ When the hunter 
hears the rustling in the jungle, and beholds the large green eyes of the 
spotted tiger glaring upon him, he waits not for the deadly spring, but 
sends at once through the brain of his couching enemy the swift and 
leaden death. If war was declared against your country by an insulting 
foe, would you wait till your sleeping cities were wakened by the terrible 
music of the bursting bomb? till your green fields were trampled by the 
hoofs of the invader, and made red with the blood of your brethren? 
No! you would send forth fleets and armies; you would unloose upon the 
broad ocean your keen falcons; and the thunder of your guns would 
arouse stern echoes along the hostile coast. Yet this would be but national 
defense, and authorized by the same great principle of self-protection, 
which applies no less to individuals than to nations.” 

—Defense of Hon. E. C. Wilkinson et al., for murder of Meeks 
and Rothwell. {Prentiss cleared them all three, and when his case 
was tried was but 30 years old.) 

S. S. Prentiss; “His vast learning and iron logic, poetic soul and 
sublime imagination, musical voice and impassioned eloquence, gave him 
an irresistible charm before court, jury and people.” 

— H. C. McDougall, of K. C. Bar. 

EXCELLED AS A JURIST 

“It will always be a mooted point among Prentiss’s friends and ad¬ 
mirers as to where his strength chiefly lay. My opinion is that it was 
a jurist that he mostly excelled; that it consisted in knowing and being 
able to show to others what was the law. I state the opinion with some 
diffidence, and, did it rest on my own judgment alone, should not hazard 
it at all. But the eminent _ Chief Justice of the High Court of Errors 
and Appeals of Mississippi thought that Prentiss appeared to most 
advantage before that court; and a distinguished judge of the Supreme 
Court of Alabama, who had heard him before the Chancellor of Mis¬ 
sissippi, expressed to me the opinion that his talents shone most con¬ 
spicuously in that forum. These were men who could be led from a fair 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


553 


judgment of a legal argument by mere oratory about as readily as old 
Playfair could be turned from a true criticism upon a mathematical 
treatise by its being burnished over with extracts from Fourth-of-July 
harangues. Had brilliant declamation been his only or chief faculty, 
there were plenty of his competitors at the bar who by their learning 
and powers of argument would have knocked the spangles off him, 
and sent his cases whirling out of court, to the astonishment of hapless 
clients who had trusted to such fragile help in time of trials.” 

— Baldwin's ^Flush Times, etcd 202-3. 

ALL ARE BORROWERS 

“How dare we claim and enjoy the innumerable benefits derived from 
our ancestors, if we repudiate the obligations they imposed upon us? 
Our liberty, our constitution and laws, our social institutions, our very 
roads and bridges, our public buildings—all won for us by the toil, 
sacrifices, of blood of our fathers, how can we have the face to appropri¬ 
ate these vast benefits, and not take the incumbrance which they bring 
with them? In truth, every good thing that we have is mortgaged; 
earth, sea, and sky—aye, the very air we breathe, as disease and sickness 
can bear witness. We inherit no blessing, no right or advantage which 
is not ours in trust which is not linked to some duty.” 

—From a Speech at Fayette, on ^Repudiation.' 2 ^Memoirs of 
S. S. Prentiss,' 251. 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PILGRIMS 

“Two centuries and a quarter ago a little tempest-tossed, weather¬ 
beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wide Atlantic, landed 
upon the bleakest shore of New England. From the deck disembarked 
a hundred and one care-worn exiles. To the casual observer no event 
could seem more insignificant. The contemptuous eye of the world 
scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet the famous vessel that bore Caesar 
and his fortunes carried but an ignoble freight compared with that of 
the Mayflower. Her little band of pilgrims brought with them neither 
wealth nor power, but the principles of civil and religious freedom. They 
planted them for the first time in the Western ContineDt. They cherished, 
cultivated, and developed them to a full and luxuriant maturity; and then 
furnished them to their posterity as the only sure and permanent foun¬ 
dations for a free goverment. Upon those foundations rests the fabric 
of our great Republic; upon those principles depends the career of human 
liberty. Little did the miserable pedant and bigot who then wielded the 
scepter of Great Britian imagine that from this feeble settlement of per¬ 
secuted and despised Puritans, in a century and a half, would arise a 
nation capable of coping with his own mighty empire in arts and arms.” 
—2 ^Memoirs,' 399. 

MUST LIVE IN PAST AND FUTURE 

“The human mind cannot be contented with the present. It is ever 
journeying through the trodden regions of the past, or making adven¬ 
turous excursions into the mysterious realms of the future. He who lives 
only in the present is but a brute, and has not attained the human dig¬ 
nity.” — From address on ''Landing of the Pilgrims,' Dec. 21, 18^5, at 
New Orleans. 

CREDIT AND CONFIDENCE BUILT UP WEST 

“It was the twin influence of credit and confidence, especially, which 
had built up the Great West to its height of power and industrial grandeur. 


554 


GREAT .SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Armed with these peaceful implements, American industry and enter¬ 
prise have subdued the wilderness and caused it to rejoice and blossom 
as the rose.” — Memoir,* 167. 

LEARNING OUTSIDE OF BOOKS 

“Much of the most valuable learning cannot be obtained from books, 
but only from observation and experience; mingle, therefore, in society 
as extensively as your inclinations will permit. Explore the different strata 
of humanity, and not confine yourself to the surface. The knowledge 
of mind can no more be obtained from books alone than a knowledge of 
mineralogy. In both cases you must inspect, not only the precious 
stones but the coarse and common materials, if you would become an adept 
in the science. * * * Nothing is more useful to a young man than the 
expression of his opinions, fresh as they arise. It gives an independence 
of thought which cannot be obtained except by the habit of frequent 
expression, either in conversation or writing.”—^ Memoirs, 122 and 146. 

“EVERY INCH A WHIG” 

At one time Prentiss was billed to speak for the Whigs in Nashville, 
Tenn.; but as was his habit got on a spree, and wandered away from the 
committee which had him in charge, knowing his weakness. The time 
came to make the speech—but no Prentiss, and no one else could appease 
the vast concourse of people—some of whom had come hundreds of miles 
to hear the celebrated speaker. After an hour or more he was found 
down in a cow-pen, in a very filthy condition, utterly helpless, and 
oblivious to the surroundings. It was important that they get him up, 
and sobered off, so that the great crowd would not be disappointed, as 
no one but Prentiss could hold such a crowd. They fished him out, 
cleaned off his clothes as best they could, as he had come over from 
Natchez, Miss., with no change of suits, walked him around to sober him 
up, and finally led him upon the improvised stage. He threw his arm 
around the limb of a tree, with which the platform was surrounded, 
to balance himself and keep from falling, and thus began:— 

“Ladies and gentlemen, though I appear before you clad in the habili¬ 
ments of Democracy—I am every inch a Whig!” 

— Told to the author of this work by Attorney Oldham, of Houston, 
Texas, 1896. 

PRENTISS’S VIEW OP THE LAW 

“Prentiss felt that the science of the law itself presented the noblest 
field of the intellectual faculties, and was deeply sensible of the high 
responsibilities assumed by all who embark in it as a means of acquiring 
a livelihood. He treated with scorn the vulgar prejudices against it, 
founded upon the faults or delinquencies of its unworthy members. It 
was the profession which, in his opinion, furnished the materials to form 
the statesmen, the one from which the patriot could provide the most 
efficient weapons to vindicate the freedom and honor of the country. 
The boldest and most devoted champions of popular liberty in every 
civilized age and every civihzed clime were to be found in the ranks of 
the legal profession. He believed that in our own country they afforded 
one of the strongest bonds of our national Union.” 

—Remarks by Judge McCaleb, at meeting of the New Oreleans 
Bar, Nov., 1850. 

EXTRACT FROM PRENTISS’ REPLY TO HARDIN 

In the Wilkinson murder case, Ben Hardin had closed his opening 
speech, many deemed conviction certain. Prentiss, in Ids reply, tore his 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


555 


argument and every position advanced to tatters. Turning suddenly 
upon Hardin, and, stooping his face until it almost touched that of the 
stern Kentuckian, he hissed forth:— 

“Dare you, sir, ask a verdict of such a jury as is here sitting, upon this 
testimony? You, sir, under the verdict of Nature must soon appear 
before the awful bar to which you now strive permanently to consign 
this noble, this gallant young man! Should you succeed, you must 
meet him there. Could you, in the presence of Almighty God—He 
who knows the inmost thoughts—^justify your work of to-day? His 
mandate is not to the gibbet. Eternal justice dictates there, whose decrees 
are eternal. Do you think of this ? Do you defy it ? If not, if you invoke 
it, do it through your acts toward your fellowman. Have you to-day 
done unto this man as you would he should do unto you ? I pause for a 
reply—None. Then shudder and repent, for the record even now is 
maMng up against you in that high court from which there is no appeal. 
You, gentlemen of the jury, are no hired advocates; you are not laboring 
for blood-money. Though your responsibility to your God is equal to 
his, you will go to the bar of your Creator with blood—guiltless blood 
—upon your consciences, on the eventful day, look around you for the 
accusing spirit of him whom you consigned to the gibbet with a 
conscious innocence of murder. How will it be with you^ (Turning again 
to Hardin.) Ah! how will it be with you? Still silent. Despite the 
hardness of his features, mercy like halo sweeps over them, and speaks 
to you, gentlemen, eloquently; ‘Acquit the accused!’ Look over yonder, 
gentlemen; within these walls is one awaiting your verdict in tearless 
agony—she who but for this untoward event would now have been happy 
as his bride; she who has cheered him in his prison-cell daily with her 
presence and lovely soul! Hers, not his fate, is in your hands. To him 
death is nothing: the brave defy death—the good fear it not; then, 
why should he fear? But she! O God! it is a fearful thing to crush to 
death with agony the young, hopeful, and loving heart of a virtuous 
woman. His death is only terrible in her future. Go with her, gentlemen, 
through life; contemplate the wan features of slow decay; see in these 
the one eternal, harrowing thought; list to the sigh which rives the heart; 
watch the tear which falls in secret; see her sink into the grave; then 
turn away, look up into heaven and from your heart say: ‘O God! I did 
it.’ You will not; you can not; you dare not.” 

—From W. H, Sparks^ ^Memoirs of Fifty Years,’ 360-1. 

HIS WEAKNESS 

“Prentiss was a noble, whole-souled magnanimous man; as pure of honor, 
as lofty in chivalric bearing as the heroes of romance; but, mixed with 
these brilliant qualities were vices of mind and habit which those 
fascinating graces rendered doubly dangerous; for vice is more easily 
copied than virtue; and in the partnership between virtue and vice, 
vice subsidizes virtue to its uses. Prentiss lacked regular, self-denying, 
systematic application. He accomplished a great deal, but not a great 
deal for liis capital; if he did more than most men he did less than the 
task of such a man: if he gathered much, he wasted and scattered more. 
He wanted the great and essential element of a true, genuine, moral great¬ 
ness; there was not—above his intellect—-above his bright array of strong 
powers and glittering faculties —above the fierce hosts of passion in 
liis soul—a presiding spirit of Duty. Life was no trust to him: it was a 
thing to be enjoyed—a bright holiday season—a gala day, to be spent 
freely and carelessly—a gift to be decked out with brilliant deeds and 
eloquent words and all gewgaws of fancy—and to be laid down bravely 
when the evening star should succeed the bright sun, and the dews begin 
to fall softly upon the green earth. True, he labored more than most men: 
but he labored as he frollicked—because his mind could not be idle, but 


556 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


burst into work as by the irrepressible instinct which sought occupation 
as an outlet to intellectual excitement; but what he accomplished was 
nothing to the measure of his powers. He studied more than he seemed to 
study—more probably than he cared to have it believed he studied. 
But he could accomplish with only a slender effort, the end for which 
less gifted men must delve, and toil, and slave. But the imitators, the 
many youths of warm passions and high hopes, ambitious of distinction, 
yet solicitous of pleasure—blinded by the glare of Prentiss’ eloquence, 
and corruscations of a wit and fancy through which his speeches were 
borne as a stately ship through the phosphorescent waves of tropical 
sea, what example was it to them to see the renown of the Forum, the 
eloquence of the Hustings, the triumphs of the Senate associated with the 
faro-table, the midnight revel, the drunken carouse, the loose talk of 
the board laden with wine and cards ? What Prentiss effected they failed 
in compassing.” 

—Joseph G. Baldwin’s *Flvsh Times of Alabama and Mississ¬ 
ippi,’ 218-9. 

PRENTISS’ ELOQUENCE 

“His imagination was colored and imbued with the light of the shadowy 
past, and was richly stored with the unreal but life-like creations which 
the genius of Shakespeare and Scott had evoked from the ideal world. 
He had lingered spell-bound among the scenes of mediaeval chivalry. 
His spirit had dwelt, until almost naturalized, in the mystic dreamland 
they peopled—among palladins, and crusaders, and knights-templar; 
with Monmouth and Percy—with Bois-Gilbert and Ivanhoe, and the 
bold McGregor—with the cavaliers of Rupert, and the iron enthusiasts 
of Fairfax. As Judge Bullard remarks of him, he had the talent of an 
Italian improvisatore, and could speak the thoughts of poetry with the 
inspiration of oratory, and in the tones of music. The fluency of his 
speech was unbroken—no syllatle unpronounced—not a ripple on the 
smooth and brilliant tide. Probably he never hesitated for a word in his 
life. His diction adapted itself, without effort, to the thought; now 
easy and familiar, now stately and dignifled, now beautiful and various 
as the hues of the rainbow, again compact, even rugged in sinewy strength, 
or lofty and grand in eloquent declamation. His face and manner were 
alike uncommon. The turn of the head was like Byron’s; his face and 
the action were what the mind made them. The excitement of the features, 
the motions of the head and body, the gesticulation he used, were all 
in absolute harmony with the words you heard. You saw and took 
cognizance of the general effect only; the particular instrumentalities 
did not strike you; they certainly did not call attention to themselves. 
How a countenance so redolent of good humor as his at times could 
so soon be overcast, and express such intense bitterness, seemed a marvel. 
But bitterness and the angry passions were, probably, as strongly im¬ 
planted in him as any other sentiments or qualities.” 

— Baldwin’s ‘Flush Times, etc.’ 214. 

READ BIOGRAPHY 

“It would be well to read some biography—more expecially the lives 
of the great men of our country—Washington, Franklin, etc. It will 
raise your ambition, and show you what can be done through industry 
and exertion, by those whose advantages have not been as good as your 
own. Success in life depends not so much upon the actual quantity of 
knowledge which a man possesses, as upon the skill with which he is 
enabled to bring it to bear upon the affairs in which he may be engaged.” 


MOMAN PRUEITT (1872- ), Oklahoma 

DEFIANCE TO A WITNESS WHO THREATENED MURDER 


“Here’s where I get killed! Measure me now for my coffin. Begin 
to dig my grave. This bad man Jennings, this outlaw who is capital¬ 
izing his every criminal act, who tenders his career as a train robber 
as his chief asset for citizenship, has threatened to kill any man who 
dares to call him a liar. I call him a liar. I call him a perjurer. I say 
he is unworthy the respect of any man. I say this and I say that A1 
Jennings will not dare to crook his httle finger at me. * * * Followed the 
flag ten thousand miles, did he? Let me tell you, men, he’d follow the 
bedragled petticoats of a degraded woman ten thousand miles where he’d 
follow the flag one. This brave soldier, who stood there in that darkened 
room in a Washington hotel and peeped through a crack at a blind man 
who had been lured into a lighted room by a woman. A brave soldier 
he was, peeping through a crack! 

“Senator, you were there groping in the darkness of your blindness. 
You were there. Senator Gore, surrounded by men whose souls were as 
black as the dregs of hell, and this woman, her record tainted. They’d 
have you believe she was as pure as a rose opening for the first time to 
the rising sun; that no rough hands ever soiled her. But has any honest 
man raised his voice to defend her here? No woman has sat near her 
throughout the long days of this trial. Her own sex has avoided her. 
She is a thing apart because of this shameful thing she has done. Even 
a scarlet woman would not touch the hem of her skirt—this woman 
whose victim was a blind man. Talk about your Miltons and all the 
blind men of the ages who have toiled and climbed through eternal night 
to high achievement. But this man, blind since he was a child, has out¬ 
done them all. He has groped his way with unseeing eyes to the floor of 
the Senate, to a position second only to that of the President, and on 
those floors he has been able to meet in battle for the rights the giants of 
debate. And today millions in this Nation are awaiting your verdict. 
Shall it be a verdict in behalf of conspirators and blackmailers? Shall 
the millions of this Nation be told that you, by your verdict, have helped 
these political jackalls pull down this bhnd man? They are yelping at 
his flanks like a pack of hungry wolves.” 

—Moman Prueitt in defense of Senator Thos. P. Gore, at Okla¬ 
homa City, Okla., Feb. 17, 19H. 

(This was a damage suit by Mrs. Bond, who claimed she was drawn 
into a room and insulted by Senator Gore, in a hotel in Washington, 
D. C. The verdict was unanimous for the defendant). 


THE PERSONALITY OF PRUEITT 

Prueitt is a man with a history written in deeds of Oklahoma, when it 
was all Indian country, and a man had to be a man to survive. He 
told the jury, in the above case, that he used to be a bootblack on the 
streets of Ft. Smith, Arkansas, in the days when it was not uncommon to 
hang five outlaws from the same gallows in one day. And the story goes 
that he was a gunmaji, and that religion touched his heart, tender as that 
of a girl, and he became an evangelist and preached in all the cow camps 
up and doAvn the range country. From that he drifted into the practice 
of law and it was his oratory, his gift of persuasive speaking that made 
him successful. They send for him to try cases as far away as Seattle. 


558 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Dr. Hyde, of Kansas City, tried to get him to defend him for the murder 
of Thomas Swope. His hair is black as a crow’s wing and long. When 
he first came to Oklahoma, he rode in on a broncho and his black hair 
fell below his shoulders, but his young wife, one of the prettiest women 
in Oklahoma, made him shear off a foot of it. When he talks to a jury 
he takes off collar and tie, rolls down the band of his shirt and pushes his 
sleeves above his elbqws for action. And as he talks he couches like an 
Indian and walks up and down as a tiger paces its cage, his head thrust 
forward, his face over the jury-box. It is impossible to convey an im¬ 
pression of his speech by printing the words he says. 


CHRIST’S INFLUENCE ON ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, 
POETRY AND MUSIC 

“The effects of Christ’s influence on four of the chief expressions of the 
inner life of man—architecture, painting, poetry and music—^is less 
frequently recognized, but if more indirect is scarcely less apparent. 
* * * Music as we know it, with melody and harmony, did not 

exist prior to the Christian era. Its existence is primarily due to an en¬ 
deavor to find some fitting vocal expression for the emotions which Chris¬ 
tianity had called into being. It is the gift of Christianity to mankind. 
Thus it is that though the Founder of Christianity is not known to have 
written a single verse or a line of music, or to have drawn a picture, 
planned an edifice; music, poetry, painting and architecture were all new 
born in his birth at Bethlehem. 

“It may be said with confidence that there would neither be a commer¬ 
cial credit system, nor a post office, nor a public school system, nor a 
political nor industrial liberty of the world if the world had never known 
the influence of Jesus Christ, since they never have existed where that 
influence has not been known. Architecture, literature, painting, music, 
material progress, political freedom and the social order all owe an in¬ 
estimable debt to Jesus Christ, and they are all witnesses to the life 
which he has given to the world. Every material, visible, audible thing 
in modern life is Christian in so far as it possesses the Christian spirit. 
The Sistine Madonna is no less truly Cliristian than the Apostle’s Creed; 
Bach’s Passion music is no less Christian than the Catholic Mass or the 
Puritan prayer meeting; the Salvation Army is no less truly Christian 
than the church, whatever the history of its orders. There is no more 
reason why a Christian congregation should be confined to the Apostle’s 
Creed or the Nicene Creed as a statement of its faith than why it should 
be confined to the Psalms of David in its praises or to a reproduction 
in its windows of the pictures on the walls of the catacombs.’’ 

—Lyman Abbott, 'What Christianity Means to Me', {1921), pp. 

74-80. 



RUFUS PERCIVAL RANNEY (1813-1891), Ohio 


THE COMMON LAW 

“The foundation principles of the common law have been so built 
up from the experience of ages, constantly adapting itself to the business 
and relations of men of society, that we seldom fail to find principles, 
which if carried to legitimate results, are not altogether sufficient to 
settle every controversy.” 


NAPOLEON 

“The Code Napoleon constitutes one of his titles to renown. He 
originated it, and his vast power and popularity carried it through. 
He contributed his full share to make it the admirable system of juris¬ 
prudence that it is; and if it cannot be truly said that his qualifications 
for civil administration were equal to his unsurpassed military genius, 
jmt I think it no exaggeration to say that in both respects he deserved 
to be ranked amongst the first characters of history. In one direction 
this sober, painstaking and accurate work displays him as vividly as the 
narrative of the brilliant campaign of Marengo, which immediately 
preceded this undertaking; and in both, as on many other occasions, the 
world has seen exhibited that penetrating genius, sound judgment and 
prompt decision, which so eminently characterizes the man; and 
above all that wonderful influence over men, which enabled him to bring 
to his aid the unremitting energies of those best qualified for any given 
undertaking, without which great results are never attainable.” 

—From a letter of Judge Ranney's, Nov. 16, 1898. 

JUSTICE’S COURT,—THE PEOPLE’S COURT 

While the compiler of this work was a practicing lawyer at Lorain, 
Ohio, in the eighties he was told by Conrad Reid, one of the reliable, 
staunch citizens of the place, that a few years before he was elected 
to the office of Justice of the Peace of Black River Township, in which 
the City of Lorain is situated. After being thus honored, he had con¬ 
scientious scruples as to his ability to act in the capacity of a Judge—as 
he knew no law, and did not want to know any; that he had many times 
been in Justice Courts, during the trial of cases, when the lawyers would 
argue pro and con as to the competency of certain evidence, etc., and he 
reasoned he would not know how to decide whether to admit or reject 
the testimony; so, all things considered, made up his mind that he would 
not qualify for the office. In this dilemma, he consulted Judge Ranney, 
who was his legal adviser when in deep water. The Judge’s advice was 
substantially as follows; 

“Squire, you have been elected by the people of your community 
because they have confidence in you as a man—and you are probably 
the best qualified of any one they could have selected. You don’t have 
to know any law. This is the people’s court—where minor matters 
are settled, or attempted to be settled. You go home and qualify. 
When a case comes up before you, hear all the testimony you want to 
hear: if you don’t want to hear it, shut off the witnesses and the lawyers, 
and if they do not mind, commit them to jail. You are boss. Hear the 
ease through, and then decide it; if you have any doubt, at the time, 
take it under advisement, for two or three days, as the statutes give 
you the right to do that, and then decide it, by the rules of common sense, 
and, nine times out of ten, you will be right. Tell them then, if they 


560 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


are not satisfied, to take it up to the higher court, where they can get 
all the law they want.” It is needless to say the Squire went back home, 
qualified, and made an ideal Justice of the Peace, and held the office for 
years. 

EXTREMELY MODEST—A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 

The compiler had another experience with Judge Ranney, as when 
mayor of the then village of Lorain he went to Cleveland to hold a 
consultation with the ex-Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of 
Ohio, in reference to this question, whether a man, not a citizen of the 
State, could hold the position of deputy marshal of the village, and 
whether, if he could, he had been legally appointed. The facts were as 
follows: 

The village had many saloons, and as a consequence many drunkards. 
The council, which stood three for the saloon element, and three against 
them, were a tie on appointing the deputy marshal, who was a Cana¬ 
dian, and the mayor cast the vote—malang four for him—as against 
three against him—the four being for temperance, or law and order. 
The lawless element enjoined the deputy marshal’s pay. In this dilemma 
Judge Ranney was consulted. The first request he made was: “Won’t you 
read the statutes upon which you rely?” The statutes were read to 
him, one in which the council of a village should consist of six male citizens, 
a majority of which should pass any ordinace they deemed best, and the 
mayor should have no vote, except in the case of a tie. The other stat¬ 
ute had reference to the appointment of one or more deputy marshals, 
removable for cause, and was substantially in these words: ‘‘The council 
may appoint one or more deputy marshals, removable for cause.” 
This had been done, as above stated. The Judge, after deliberating a 
minute or two, remarked —“I think you have a duly appointed officer 
and whether a citizen or not, he has the qualifications for that office; 
but it has been years since I have had anything to do with municipal 
law. You better consult the City Counsellor, or his deputy. They are 
upon the law, being fresh in their books, and could probably tell you 
better than I can.” 

He was offered a fee, which he declined, saying he had rendered no 
real service. It might be added the deputy City Counsellor was con¬ 
sulted, who had no doubt whatever as to the law, and that the deputy 
marshal was legally appointed, could act, and that an injunction stop¬ 
ping the payment of his salary should be dissolved at once. The mayor 
of the village was then in more doubt than he was before he left Lorain. 
This experience verifies the statement that age is cautious and wise: youth 
and inexperience is postive and bold .—The Author. 

JUDGE RANNEY’S STANDING IN OHIO 

Mr. Ranney, who for fifty years—1840 to 1890— was among the great 
lawyers, if not the greatest, who adorned the profession and the Bench 
of Ohio, was born October 30, 1813, in Hampton County, Massachusetts, 
moved with his farmer parents to Portage Co., Ohio, when but eleven, 
had poor opportunities for an early education, but managed to attend 
Western Reserve College, at Hudson, for a year. Left in the spring of 
1834, and commenced the study of law vdth Joshua R. Giddings and 
Benjamin F. Wade, in Ashtabula County; was admitted and began 
practice in Warren, Trumbull Co., and a year later, Giddings, being 
elected to Congress, formed a partnership with Benj. F. Wade, which 
continued for ten years, and was one of the strongest law firms in the 
State. In 1850 Mr. Ranney was elected a member of the State Con¬ 
stitutional Convention, and in 1851 a member of the State Supreme 
Court, resigning after five years of service, and moving to Cleveland. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


561 


Was appointed by President Buchanan, U. S. District Attorney for 
Northern Ohio, serving but a few months, when he resigned. Was an 
unsuccessful candidate for gubernatorial honors in 1859 against William 
Denison, who was elected. In 1862 he was again elected to the Supreme 
Bench of the State, which he reluctantly accepted, resigning after two 
years. From that time on his time was given to the practice until the 
close of his life. His decisions are found, during his first term, in the 
20th Ohio, and the first 5 Ohio State reports; and during the last term in 
the 14 and 15 Ohio State reports. 

He was a great common-law lawyer and equity judge; in the latter 
connection he once wrote: “When the jurisdiction of a court of equity 
is established, and its duty to hear and determine is unquestioned, it 
looks only to the substance of transactions, and is never embarrassed 
by the forms or complications on which they may be involved.” 

Says Judge E. J. Blandin, of the Cleveland Bar: 

“He was distinctively a lawyer, and his life work and his renown are 
peculiarly linked with the profession of which he was a master. But 
he was a great man; and his labors and achievements in the profession 
furnished abundant evidence that, had he been tasked with the labors 
of administration, statesmanship or authorship, he was equipped with the 
elements that would have won for him, in these capacities, a success no 
less brilliant than that which was his in the profession.” 

RANKED WITH GREAT LAWYERS 

“Rufus P. Ranney became the best lawyer and soundest judge of Ohio, 
taking rank with the most carefully trained legal minds of the country.” 

— 1st Rhodes' History of the U. S., 229. 

COMMON CARRIER—LIABLE TO PUBLIC 

“There is nothing in which the public have a deeper interest than the 
careful and prudent management of public conveyances, and no higher 
moral obligation than rests upon those intrusted with the control of 
dangerous forces to discharge their duties with care and skill. Upon 
it the safety of thousands of fives and millions of property daily depends. 
Now, one of the strongest motives for the faithful performance of these 
duties is found in the pecuniary responsibility which the carrier incurs 
for the failure. It induces him to furnish safe and suitable equipments, 
and to employ careful and competent agents. A contract, therefore, 
with one to relieve him from any part of this responsibility, reaches beyond 
the person with whom he contracts and affects all who place their persons 
or property in his custody. It is immoral, because it diminishes the motives 
for the performance of a high moral duty; and it is against public policy, 
because it takes from the public a part of the security they would other¬ 
wise have.”— Graham V. Davis, J Ohio State, 362. 


ROBERT RANTOUL, Jr. (1805-1852), Massachusetts 

UNCERTAINTY OP COMMON LAW 


“No man can tell what the comon law is: therefore it is not law; for 
a law is a rule of action; but a rule which is unknown can govern no man’s 
conduct. Notwithstanding this, it has been called the perfection of human 
reason. The common law is the perfection of human reasoning just as alco¬ 
hol is the perfection of sugar. The subtle spirit of the conimon law is 
reason double distilled, till what was wholesome and nutritive becomes 
rank poison. Reason is sweet and pleasant to the unsophisticated in¬ 
tellect; but this sublimated perversion of reason bewilders, and perplexes, 
and plunges its victim into mazes of error. * * * The judge labors to recon¬ 
cile conflicting analogies, and to derive from them a rule to decide future 
cases. No one knows what the law is before he lays it down; for it does not 
exist even in the breast of the judge. All the cases carried up to the tri¬ 
bunal of the last resort are capable of being argued, or they would not 
be carried there. Those which are not carried up are not law, for the 
Supreme Court might decide them differently. Those which are carried 
up, argued and decided, might have been decided the other way, as will 
appear from the arguments. It is, therefore, often optional with the 
judge to incline the balance as he pleases. In forty per cent of the cases 
carried up to a higher court, for a considerable number of years, ter¬ 
minating not long ago, the judgment was reversed. Almost any case, 
where there is any difference of opinion, may be decided either way, and 
plausible analogies found in the great storehouse of precedent to justify 
the decision. The law, then, is the flnal decision of the judge, after 
counsel for both parties have done their utmost to sway it to the one 
side or the other. 

“No man knows what the law is after the judge has decided it. Be¬ 
cause, as the judge is careful not to decide any point which is not brought 
before him, he restricts his decision within the narrowest possible limits; 
and though the very next case that may arise may seem, to a super¬ 
ficial observer, and even upon a close inspection by an ordinary mind, 
to be precisely similar to the last, yet the ingenuity of a thorough-bred 
lawyer may detect some unsuspected shade of difference, upon which an 
opposite decision may be founded. Great pa.rt of the skill of a judge 
consists in avoiding the direct consequences of a rule, by ingenious ex¬ 
pedients and distinctions, whenever the rule would operate absurdly; 
and as an ancient maxim may be evaded, but not be annulled, the whole 
system has been gradually rendered a labyrinth of apparent contra¬ 
dictions, reconciled by legal adroitness.”— Robert Rantovl, Jr. 

He defended Sims, the first slave recovered under the Fugitive Slave 
Law of 1850, in Mass. He was for a short period the successor of Daniel 
Webster, in the U. S. Senate, in 1851; and in Nov. of that year was 
elected to the House of Representatives. 


NEW HAMPSHIRE’S STATESMEN 

“In the ratio of her population New Hampshire contributed more 
mental and more moral strength to the bar, to the Senate, and to the 
cabinet of the country than any other State in the Union. There were 
Ichabod Bartlett, the Randolph of the North, the brilliant flashes of whose 
wit, keen sarcasm and pungent irony gave life and spirit to the dry 
judicial discussion; Sullivan, the fascination of whose happy eloquence 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYER^ 


563 


still lingers; Fletcher, whose legal acumen, clear, distinct, and precise 
statement, closly reasoned argument and conscious mastery of his subject, 
adorn no less the bench than formerly the bar; Jeremiah Mason, that 
counsellor of marvelous sagacity unrivalled in his knowledge of human 
nature, and Daniel Webster,” 

—Robert Rantoul, Jr., Eulogy of Levi Woodbury, Oct. 16, 1851. 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

“The genius of Italian literature was cradled on the stormy sea of 
liberty. The fine arts, through the whole period of their perfection, were 
the exponents of Christianity, Where are the Dante, the Ariosto, or 
the Milton, of the moslem faith? Where is the Michael Angelo, or the 
Raphael of Bagdad, or of Teheran? Where the Handel of Cairo, or 
Aleppo ? Poetry is dumb, and music soulless, and painting hath no charm 
under the brutalizing superstition, into which the doctrine of the Koran, 
after the first outburst of frantic ferocity has finally subsided. Strike 
with such paralysis the mind of Europe, and the stary Galileo would 
have lived to other woes than those of too much science. No Vasco 
would have explored the adventurous passage of the realms of fabulous 
wealth in India or Cathay. No Columbus would have given a new world 
to Castile and Leon, a refuge for the oppressed, room for the disenthralled 
man to grow to the full stature of intellectual and moral ^eatness. 
No Guttenburg would have given to truth the thunder tones with which 
she shakes the world. The genius of mechanical invention would not 
have fettered the most potent of the demons, steaming, chaining him 
to the wheel, to toil at the taskwork of many millions, under the super¬ 
vision of the few trusty sentinels. Commerce would not have spread 
her white wings, like the angel of peace, over every ocean, enriching, 
enlightening, blessing wherever she smiles, and brightening daily every 
link in the golden chain of universal brotherhood. Abdaraman had 
planted himself like a hungry lion in the path of human progress. Karl 
Martel lifted his stalwart arm, and smote the grim Paynian with his 
heavy Francisque. The way is open; humanity passes on.” 

— Robt. Rantoul, Jr.-—-In Celebration of 75th Anniversary of Apr. 19, 
1775, at Concord, Mass., Apr.. 19, 1850. 

THE SOURCE OF EUROPEAN LIGHT 

“The Southwestern peninsula of Asia, inclosed by the Red Sea, the 
Mediterannean, the Euxine, and the Caspian, with a slight auxiliary 
infiuence from Egypt, is the source whence fiowed into Europe all the 
notions,—social, political, religious, which she has received from abroad 
for more than 3,000 years,” 

— Robt. Rantoul, Jr.—Anniversary of Apr. 19, 1775, at Concord, 
Apr. 19,^1850. 

AGAINST ADMINISTERING OATHS 

“Belief is involuntary. It is, therefore, no merit; nor is disbelief a 
demerit. To one mind certain evidence is conclusive; to another it carries 
no conviction. Let any man try to believe that a triangle is a circle, 
and if he were to gain the wealth of worlds he cannot. * * * There is no 
common law definition of a deity, and yet the law says that a man must 
believe in a God. What sort of a God? The Hottentot is called. Do 
you believe in God? Yes, and in what sort of a god does the Hottentot 
believe? Why, in a block of‘wood, carved by his own hands. He wants 
rain, and he whips his God—thinking by this castigation to procure the 
desired shower. Thus his god is not a being who controls him, but one 
whom he controls. And yet the Hottentot is a good wi tness in the courts 
of Great Britain. Where is the line to be drawn that shall indicate the 


564 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


kind of deity in which a witness must believe? * * * How also are you to 
get at the fact of unbelief? There is no way. There are but two classes 
of infidels—the honest one, and the dishonest one. The honest will 
tell the truth, and state that he disbelieves in a God. He cannot be 
sworn. The dishonest will lie about it, and he is sworn.” 

—On a Witness Bill, in Mass. Legislature, Feb. 23, 1837. 


THE THINKER 

“He who cannot think is an idiot; he who will not, is a bigot; he who 
dares not, is a slave; and he who thinking right, acts wrong, is without 
excuse or palliation, a villain.” 

—Address in 1839 on the ^Education of a Free People\ 


THE SAXONS 

“The Saxon family, carrying with them the love of freedom which is 
a part of their nature, the language of freedom which is theirfinahenable 
birthright, and those free institutions which, through centuries of bloody 
strife, their fathers have secured and perfected, have planted their 
colonies wherever agriculture could find a soil to cultivate, or commerce 
products to barter.”— Robert Rantoul, Jr. — Idem. 


READY DEBATER 

“In effective talent, for debate, Mr. Rantoul was unequaled. It is 
not too much to say, that no son of Massachusetts of his age ever entered 
the legislative halls better fitted for various and appropriate knowledge, 
by high purity of character, united with a ready and apt command of 
all the mental resources, in rapid, lucid, logical flow of effective and 
brilliant eloquence, than Robert Rantoul, Jr.” (This was in 1845, when 
he was 40 years of age); ‘Memoirs,’ 310. 


MONEY 

“Money facilitates exchanges as oil facilitates machinery, and more 
than is necessary for that effect is useless and injurious when intro¬ 
duced, and flows off as soon as it can make its escape as naturally as too 
much oil from an engine. Just so much money is wanted for the business 
of any country as that business will keep at a par value with money in 
other parts. If there is less than we want, its value falls, and it flows 
out as it is now flowing out in 1836. The amount in existence is of no 
consequence, if it does not vary suddenly, and if we have our share. 
If there were fifteen-sixteenths of the currency of the world struck out 
of existence to-day, an ounce of silver to-morrow would perform the same 
office that an ounce of gold performed yesterday; the only inconvenience 
would be in adjusting the new prices; but after they were adjusted busi¬ 
ness would go on and the rate of interest would be precisely the same as 
before.”— From speech on Banking Bill, — Mass. Legislature, Mch. 22, 
1836; ^Memoirs,'' 359. 

GENIUS • 

“Genius is nothing but strong passions working their action through the 
instrumentahty of strong intellect.”— From Mh July oration at South 
Reading, Mass., 1832, — 'Memoirs*, 168. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


565 


WEALTH AND POVERTY IN UNION 

“The aristocracy of wealth is impossible in a country where the property 
of an intestate father is divided equally among his children. The aris¬ 
tocracy of poverty is quite as impossible, and equally undesirable.” 

—From address to Workingmen of the U. S., 1833, — ^Memoirs,' 2J^7. 

WASHINGTON 

“That Washington was what is called a self-made man is well known 
to us all, yet Washington was pronounced by Patrick Henry, on his 
return from Congress in 1774, to be the greatest man in information 
and in judgment in that body.” 

—From Ifth July oration at Scituate, Mass., 1836. ‘‘Memoirs,' 265. 


WHAT MAKES A NATION GREAT 

“A Nation is made great, not by its fruitful acres, but by the men who 
cultivate them; not by its great forests, but by the men who use them; 
not by its mines, but by the men who work in them; not by its railways, 
but by the men who build and run them. America was a great land 
when Columbus discovered it; Americans have made it a great Nation. 
In 1776 our fathers had a vision of a new Nation ‘conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ With¬ 
out an army they fought the greatest of existing world empires that they 
might realize this vision. A third of a century later, without a navy, 
they fought the greatest navy in the world that they might win for their 
Nation the freedom of the seas. Half a century later they fought through 
an unparalleled Civil War that they might establish for all time on this 
continent the inalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 
A third of a century later they fought to emancipate an oppressed neigh¬ 
bor, and, victory won, gave back Cuba to the Cubans; sent an army of 
school-masters to educate for liberty the Filippinos, asked no war indemnity 
from their vanquished enemy, but paid him liberally for his property. 
Meanwhile they offered land freely to any farmer who would live upon 
and cultivate it; opened to foreign immigrants on equal terms, the door 
of industrial opportunity, shared with them political equality, and pro¬ 
vided by universal taxation for universal education. 

“The cynic who can see in this history only a theme for his egotistical 
satire is no true American, whatever his parentage, whatever his birth¬ 
place. He who looks with pride upon this history which his fathers have 
written by their heroic deeds, who accepts with gratitude the inheritance 
which they have bequeathed to him, and who highly resolves to preserve 
this inheritance unimpaired and to pass it on to his descendants enlarged 
and enriched, is a true American, be his birthplace or his parentage what 
it may.”— Said hy Lyman Abbott, Mar. 7, 1916. 



ISIDOR RAYNER (1850 ), Maryland 

DEFENSE OF ADMIRAL WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY 

“It has taken three years to reveal the truth. There is not a single 
word that has fallen from the tongue of a single witness, friend or foe, 
that casts the shadow of a reflection upon the honored name of the 
hero of Santiago. He has never claimed the glory of the day. Let it 
be known, he has never claimed the glory of that day. No word to this 
effect has ever gone forth from him to the American people. The valiant 
Cook, the heroic Clark, the lamented Philip, the intrepid and undaunted 
Wainwright, and all the other captains and every man at every gun, 
and every soul on board of every ship, are equal participants with Ad¬ 
miral Schley in the honor wrought upon that immortal day. We cannot 
strike his figure down standing upon the bridge of the Brooklyn. Says 
Boatswain Hill, ‘Every he'ad was bowed but his as the Spanish shot and 
shell fell thick and fast,’ and sent the life blood streaming from young 
Ellis, this gallant martyr for his country’s cause. We cannot strike him 
down. ‘You may assassinate me, but you cannot intimidate me,’ said 
the Irish Patriot Curran as he turned upon his accusers and traducers. 
There he stands upon the bridge of the Brooklyn, his ship, almost alone, 
receiving the entire fire of the Spanish foe, until the Oregon, as if upon 
the wings of lightning, sped into the thickness of this mortal carnage. 
'God bless the Oregon!' was the cheer that rang from deck to deck; and on 
they went, twin brothers in the chase, until the lee gun was fired from the 
Christohal Colon and the despotic colors of Spain were swept from the 
face of her ancient possession. ‘Well done: congratulate you on the 
victory,’ was the streamer that was sent from the halyards of the Brook¬ 
lyn, and from that day to this no man has ever heard from Admiral 
Schley the slightest whisper or intimation that he has usurped the glory 
of that imperishable hour. The thunders of the Brooklyn, as she trembled 
on the waves, have been discordant music to the ears of envious foes, 
but they have pierced with a ringing melody the ears of his countrymen 
and struck a responsive chord at the fireside of every American home. 
And what is more than all which has been revealed in this case, as match¬ 
less as his courage, and as unsullied as liis honor, is his beautiful character 
and the generous spirit that animates his soul, and the forgiving heart 
that beats within his bosom.’’ 

—Before the Court of Inquiry in behalf of Admiral Winfield Scott 

Schley. 


CHRISTIANITY 

“Christianity is more than the institutions of Christianity. An in¬ 
stitution is but a corpse if it does not embody a hving spirit; form with¬ 
out spirit is always lifeless; language is but idle words if it is not a vehicle 
for thought or feeling; the kiss may be a symbol of treason as well as of 
loyalty; the palace without love is a hovel, the hut which enshrines 
love is a home. But it is also true that spirit without body is almost as 
useless. Love in the heart inspires no one if it is not expressed; unex¬ 
pressed thoughts are of little service to him who possesses them and of no 
service to others. The Declaration of Independence would have been 
of no value if there had not been men willing to fight for it and die for 
it. Christianity is the spirit of Christ; the Clmstian Church is its imper¬ 
fect embodiment. The institutions of reh^on are not religion; but 
religion would be almost wholly ineffective if it were not for its insti¬ 
tutions.”— Lyman Abbott, ‘What Christianity Means to Me'. 



ISAAC F. REDFIELD (1804-1876), Vermont 

BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OP THE RAILROAD 

“Legislation in the infancy of all new undertakings is more imperfect 
than it will be likely to be when such projects are more fully matured. 
* * * Hence it is not always easy to impose upon these companies the 
obligation to do in all cases what simple justice requires, and those who 
suffer essential, and sometimes perhaps, ruinous injuries, or rather 
damage, by their construction and operation, must be content to take the 
law as it is. They must remember that courts do not ordinarily make 
the law upon this subject, more than others, but only take it as they 
find it, ready-made to their hands, and apply it in such manner and to 
such cases as it was intended to reach. 

“It is no fair test to the general liability of a railroad company for their 
acts to argue from what natural persons may lawfully do, and what, 
if done by them, becomes a nuisance. * * * In the absence of all statutory 
provisions to that effect, no case, and certainly no principle seems to justify 
the subjecting a person, natural or artificial, in the prudent pursuit of his 
own lawful business, to the payment of consequential damage to other 
persons, in their property or business. This always happens, more or 
less, in all rival pursuits and often where there is nothing of that kind. 
One mill, or store, or school, often injures another. One’s dwelling is 
undermined, or its lights darkened, or its prospect obscured and thus 
materially lessened in value, by the erection of other buildings upon the 
lands of other proprietors. One is beset with noise, or dust or other 
inconvenience by the alteration of a street, or more especially by the 
introduction of a railway, but there is no redress in any of these cases. 

“The thing is lawful in the railroad, as much as in the other cases 
supposed. One would not care if they were altogether excluded from 
cities and large villages. But the legislature have determined otherwise 
and the plaintiff must be content to take his chance with other citizens. 
These public works come too near some and too remote from others. 
They benefit many and injure some. It is not possible to equalize the 
advantages and disadvantages. It is so with everything and always will 
be. We do not expect to have the consolation, if consolation it be, to 
know that these little inequalities will ever be made precisely equal with 
us all, in this Ufe. But it will be so at no very distant day, and it becomes 
a reasonable man, perhaps, not to magnify them inordinately since they 
are so short-lived and so absolutely past the remedy of all human skill. 
Those most skilled in these matters, even empyrics of the most sanguine 
pretensions, soon find their philosophy at fault, in all attempts at equal¬ 
izing the ills of life. The advantages and disadvatanges of a single railway 
could not be satisfactorily balanced by all the courts of the state in forty 
years. Hence they must be left, as all other consequential damage and 
gain is left, to balance and counterbalance itself as it best can.” 

—Isaac F. Redfield, In Hatch v. Vi. Central R. R., 2o Ft., 4.9, 58. 

(Judge Redfield was a Supreme Judge of Vt. for 25 years,— from 
1835 to 1860: a graduate of Dartmouth College, N. H., 1825; professor 
of Medical Jurisprudence in Dartmouth College, 1857-61; made Doctor 
of Laws, by Trinity College, in 1849, and Dartmouth, in 1855; was 
author of many law books, after leaving the bench, in 1860, and removing 
to Boston, 1861.) 

“He brought to his high office, as judge, profound learning, keen 
observation, comprehensive wisdom, and a clear and incisive perception 
of all matters submitted to his judgment,” says William B. C. Stickney, 
of the Vermont Bar, 5 Great American Lawyers, p. 12. 


JAMES A. REED (1861- ), Missouri 

CHAMP CLARK MEMORIAL—JAMES A. REED 

“He who sleeps today bears with him to the tomb a legacy so rare, 
even envy is compelled to pay the tribute of admiration. His long life 
(died at 71) was devoted to the service of the public will. Upon his 
country’s altar he placed the whole wealth of his magnificent talents, 
the zeal of youth, the energy of middle life, the wisdom of old age. The 
fires of patriotic love for home and country consumed his very soul. 
He will live because he helped liberty to live. Men who so live never die. 
In ever-widening circles his influence will be felt. As time runs on and 
the historian surveys the picture of this troubled time, there will arise 
in it no figure more heroic than the rugged form that lies so still today. 
He was the best beloved of Americans.” 

— Jas. A. Reed, U. S. Senator, Mar. 5, 1921, in H. of R., Wash¬ 
ington, D. C. 

SOCIALISM 

“Shall the federal goverment license business ? Before urging or con¬ 
demning government control it is necessary to get a proper conception 
of the part the government plays. The greatest trouble with the public 
is that it has been so prosperous, so secure in its optimism that people 
have given little real thought to the fundamentals of government. It 
is the most natural thing in the world for people to say, ,‘it ought to be 
stopped by law.’ Everyone desires to air his troubles at the City Hall, 
Jefferson City or Washington. At Washington, congress has so many 
appeals it dumps the whole mess over on the President after enacting 
laws giving him authority to name commissioners or boards. These 
boards of three, five or nine men, however well equipped, well intentioned, 
go out with almost unlimited powers for investigations. Often an ‘expert’ 
who couldn’t make a living in his home town, does all the probing. The 
board reviews and reports his findings. 

“The public believes it gets government control. In most cases, what it 
really gets is the individual impression of one man, or a small group of 
men, often not so well acquainted as a clerk in your employ. Not question¬ 
ing the necessity of government action, the results, we all know, led to 
chaos. Rules were devised and our investigation revealed that most of 
the hardships were due to the enforcement of those rules. But the 
instance which shows the fallacy of theorist control was in the summary. 
We started a probe to determine a coal trust, a combination of ex¬ 
tortionists. Instead of finding that, we found the coal supply was ad¬ 
equate for 6,000 years; that distribution was hindered by strikes and lack 
of transportation; that both these delays were the direct result of rules and 
orders by theorists. Wage increases doubled the mine price of the prod¬ 
uct. Without saying whether government wage scale was needed, 
it caused dissatisfaction in coal sections where conditions differed from 
those of other sections. Virtually doubling of railroad rates and an arbi¬ 
trary control of profits gave the public coal at a guaranteed price!—at 
a price almost double it had paid before. 

“But the government control, while limiting profits, failed to guarantee 
losses and individual effort stopped. Here is Mr. Walter S. Dickey. 
He makes clay pipe. If any government bureau insists on regulating 
his sales and profits, that industry must stop until that same board 
specifies the wages he must pay, the price of his materials, his cost of 
coal for manufacture, his shipping rates and be ready to safeguard 
his investment. Otherwise the initiative of the creator of a business is 
lost. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


569 


“This nation, the greatest in history, didn’t become so through the 
superiority of its founders. It was through the unshackled efforts of the 
limbs and brains of its people that it grew. A government that attempts 
to stifle that initiative invites disaster.” 

— To the Commercial Club, Kansas City, Mo., March 30, 1921. 

FOREIGN IMMIGRATION INTO U. S. 

(The Senate had under consideration H. R. 14461, to provide for the 
temporary suspension of immigration, and for other purposes). 

“In my judgment, the Congress is in this matter repeating its often- 
repeated blunder. * * * Let me take just a moment to say that there has 
been no stage of Arnerican history when the same cry was not heard. 

“It was made against the Dutch when they came here and began to 
populate large portions of Pennsylvania; and even so wise a man as 
Benjamin Franklin, probably the wisest man this country has ever 
produced, declared, in substance, that the U. S. would be turned into a 
foreign province by the invading Dutch, and yet probably no better 
people ever hved anywhere than the Dutch immigrants and their descend¬ 
ants. It was again declared when the Irish, in order to escape the in¬ 
tolerable conditions of their own country, fled to this land. They were 
denounced as ignorant paupers. Many, indeed, were unlettered, for 
education had been denied them. Their schools had been destroyed and 
their teachers had been persecuted, so that the schools of Ireland were 
held in the depths of the forest, and thus came to be known as ‘hedge 
schools.’ It was also true that the Irish immigrant was in many instances 
a pauper in appearance; frequently he had scarce clothing for his back. 
He cut but a sorry figure at first. He had to accept the most lowly oc¬ 
cupations, and he did. Whereupon the hue and cry was raised against the 
Irish immigrant; against the Irish. Yet, sir, in America the sons and 
daughters of Ireland have written their names on every brilliant page 
of American history. The offspring of those who would have barred the 
Irish from our shores have found it very hard to keep pace with the 
descendants of the despised Irish immigrant. 

“Again the cry was raised when the tide of Bohemian immigration set 
in. There had been persecution and rebellion in Austria. Accordingly, 
the Slovaks for a time had come in great numbers. They arrived wearing 
their leather waistcoats and smoking their long pipes, their countenances 
grizzled with the agony of toil and ploughed deep with the furrows of 
hardship. At once self-appointed custodians of America cried out against 
these immigrants and prophesied the destruction of our country. The 
immigrants survived. They adopted American customs. They melted 
almost insensibly into our civic and pohtical life. The descendants of 
these Bohemians today take their place in the ranks of our citizens and 
keep pace with the best there is. 

“Similarly, a cry was raised against the Swedish, the Norwegian, and the 
Danish immigrants; yet there sit in this Chamber today two men, one 
a Norwegian and one a Dane by birth. They came as immigrants. One 
of these distinguished public servants told me when he landed here he 
possessed but a single dollar. He probably could not have qualified for 
entrance under the present immigration laws. 

“Attacks have likewise been made upon the Jewish people who have 
crowded to our shores. The spirit of intolerance has been especially 
active as to them. At this hour a man possessed of a mighty fortune, 
yet so illiterate and ignorant that he does not know the history of our 
country, is instigating a propaganda against the people; but the Jew 
who came here, the victim of persecution and poverty, has nevertheless 
made his way in everj^ avocation of life. At the bar and on the bench, 
in medicine, in art, in industry, in finance and science he has taken a 


570 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


high and honorable place. Those who would proscribe him are merely the 
advocates of medieval intolerance. German immigrants came to this 
country in great numbers, and the same old cry was raised. Yet even 
at this hour, when the fogs of prejudice still hang thick in the skies of 
national opinioD, I do not hesitate to say that the German immigrants 
to this country have added a sturdy strain to the American blood. 

‘T have before my mind’s eye a scene of not long ago. They were 
marching away, some of them volunteers, some of them drafted. But they 
were marching away all in the same brown uniform,—the son of Ireland, 
with his blue eyes; the son of Scandinavia, vdth the flush of health 
in his cheeks; the son of Italy, whose warm clime had burned his face to a 
swarthy hue; the son of Scotland, with his clean limbs and his straight 
back; the son of Austria, with his big bones and double flsts; the son of 
Germany, with his Arm muscles and set jaws. Yet as they marched away 
they were all Americans. Upon the battle fleld they bowed their backs 
and held their bayonets flxed and Arm, they charged with indomitable 
hearts, they fought and died in the same heroic way for their flag and our 
flag, for their country and our country. 

“Who are these royal families of ours? They are the children of the 
oppressed lands of the earth. Their fathers came here barefooted or 
wearing wooden shoes, with homespun on their backs, with the weight 
of twenty centuries of oppression upon their souls. They came in ignorance 
and superstition. They burned old women as witches in Massachusetts. 

“They drove Roger Williams into the wilderness. They set up the 
whipping-post. They established the laws of Great Britain, with all 
their brutalities as well as their virtues. 

“If I had my way, I would establish in Europe courts or tribunals where 
the character of each immigrant could be examined, whereby we could 
become assured that he was sound in body, sound in mind, and sound in 
principles, and then I would let liim come. And every such man who came 
would be another man added to our man power; every soul that came 
would be a soul added to the aggregate soul of America; every heart that 
came would beat for our flag, and every hand would strike in its defense. 
This is a bill of proscription. It is as narrow as the Middle Ages. It 
is as obsolete as the spirit of the sixteenth century. It belongs to the time 
of the rack and thumbscrew, when the argument was the scaffold and 
when philosophy found expression in the torch of persecution. I decline 
to support such a bill.”— In U. S. Senate, Feb. 19, 1921. 

THE MEANING OF MOTHERHOOD, BY JAMES A. REED 

“What I have said and shall say I mean to apply to the members of 
the Children’s Bureau, including its servants, agents and employees, 
substantially all of whom enjoy the blissful and seemingly perpetual 
state of single blessedness. I care not how estimable the office-holding 
spinster may be, nor how her heart may throb for the dream children 
she does not possess, her yearnings cannot be substituted for a mother’s 
experience. Official meddling cannot take the place of mother love. 
Mother love! The golden cord that stretches from the throne of God, 
uniting all animate creation to divinity. Its savage women held their 
babes to almost famished breasts and died that they might live. Its 
holy flame glows as bright in hovels where poverty breaks a meager crust 
as in palaces where wealth holds Lucullian feasts. It is the ooe great 
universal passion, the sinless passion of sacriflce. Incomparable in its 
sublimity, interference is sacrilege, regulation is mockery. 

“The wild beasts hear its voice and answer to its call. A tigress Anding 
her cubs slaughtered, pauses to lick their wounds, and then with raging 
heart seeks out their murderer. A she wolf standing at the mouth of her 
den, with gleaming fangs and blood-red tongue, dies in defense of her 
whelps. Tiger’s cubs, or wolf’s whelps, I would rather feel the rough 
caresses of the hairy paws of my savage mother, I would rather have her 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


571 


care and protection than that of an official animal tamer. I once saw a 
little timorous mother quail, with marvelous intelligence and still more mar¬ 
velous courage, protect her brood by exposing herself to the hunter’s dead¬ 
ly aim. I then realized that nothing could take the place of mother love. 

“If this divine fire so warms and thrills the heart of beast and bird, with 
what intensity does it consume the bosom, with what ecstacy inspire the 
soul of a woman, for the child of her body? Although she knows she 
must risk her own to bring forth a new life, she does not draw back. 
The love-lit eyes behold only visions of happiness, of glory and of power 
to be realized by her unborn child. With smiling Hps and eager heart 
she enters the vale of shadows. The first cry of the new born falls on 
her ear, sweet as the music of paradise. Her trembling hands caress the 
tender skin; her soul cries out the anxious question, ‘Will my baby live?’ 
The torturing days of convalescence fly swiftly upon wings of hope. 
She nestles the tiny, helpless thing to her bosom; sustains it with the milk 
of her body, every drop drawn from a fountain of infinite love. With 
indescribable sohcitude she watches her offspring. Even when her body 
slumbers her soul keeps vigil and her hands in unison with her spiri't 
will stretch forth to soothe the baby to sleep. With glowing pride she 
watches the growing child, shields it from harm, guides it along the 
paths of rectitude, inspires its soul with lofty sentiments of honor and of 
faith in the eternal God. 

“When time has piled the snows upon her head and turned her brown 
or raven fficks to white, her love v\iil still abide, riper and sweeter with 
the passing years. Though she may live until her children are them¬ 
selves grown old and gray, she yet will see the silken locks of youth; 
their roughened hands yet have the caressing touch of baby fingers; 
their voices bear to her the tender and melodious notes of industry. 
And when at last she approaches the portals of death there is no solace 
so sweet as the presence of those she bore ‘to people and replenish the 
earth.’ For mother love there is no substitute, even though it bear an 
official stamp. If there be truth in religion, then this holy sentiment 
was planted in woman’s heart by the hand of God. It has made life 
possible. It is in truth the very source of hfe itself. When all other passions 
are dead it survives. It will endure the scorching breath of contumely 
with unwavering fidelity. 

“A mother will enter prisons of shame and kiss a felon hand thrust 
through the bars. She will sit beside the accused in courts of law, when 
the mob jeers and the heartless machinery of justice grinds its grist of 
agony, and with unwavering faith maintain her child is innocent. She 
will stand at the foot of the scaffold and, when the trap has fallen, cover 
the condemned body with kisses and fiowers. It is still to her the innocent 
suckling she once hugged to her breast. But if the path of life has led 
her son to fields of honor, her heart will glow with pride, ineffable, un¬ 
speakable. If he is called to war, she will Md him good-by with dry eyes, 
altho her heart be filled with tears. She will maintain a firm and hopeful 
mien, that he may gain sublimer courage from her sublime example. 
When he sleeps upon the tented field her spirit will keep watch. Whilst 
he is slumbering she will pray. In the agony of waiting she will die a 
thousand deaths, but will choke back her sobs and hide her torture. 
She vill search for him among the slain, and try with kisses to warm the 
dead and unresponsive lips to life. She wiU coffin her heart with the 
beloved body, and her soul will keep the eternal vigil of a deathless love. 

“Mother love! It has produced, fondled, reared, inspired and glorified 
all of the shadowy hosts who have passed across the ‘bank of time’ 
since man first raised his eyes toward the heavens. It is, I say again, 
the golden cord that binds the earth to God. Official interference between 
the mother and her bate is tyrannical and criminal.” 

—SenatorlJames A. Reed, in U. S. Senate, June 29, 1921, on ^The 

Maternity_^a7id Infancy Bill.’ 


1 


572 GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 

JAS. A. REED SCORES GIFT TREATY 

“I have heard more things Abraham Lincoln said distorted to fit the 
favorite theory of some gentleman of today than any other man. But the 
greatest act of vandalism I ever have known is for a pretended friend 
to reach his hand into the coffin of the helpless dead and tear from it 
the white shroud to run up as the white flag of surrender over the great 
monument Roosevelt sought to erect to his memory. This twaddle about 
not having wronged Columbia, yet owing her 25 million dollars, is not 
worthy of a debate in a country schoolhouse between a lot of boys 14 
years old.”— In U. S. Senate, Apr. 19, 1921. 

(Jas. A Reed was born Nov. 3, 1861, in Mansfield, Ohio; studied law 
in the office of Hubbard, Clark and Dawley, Cedar Rapids, la., to which 
place his parents moved during his boyhood; admitted to bar, 1885; 
married Laura M. Olmstead, at Cedar Rapids, 1885; moved to Kansas 
City, Mo., 1887; Prosectuing Attorney of Jackson Co., Mo., 1887-1900, 
in which office he tried 287 criminal indictments, and convicted 285; 
was then elected mayor of Kansas City, for two terms, 1900-4; after¬ 
wards has served one term as U. S. Senator, and is now serving a second 
term of six years. He is a Democrat of the Jacksonian school). 

AMERICA WILL FIGHT 

“This is the first time in a hundred years since we have been at war 
with Europe; why were we forced into the present conflict? WeU, I 
think I can answer. First, because international law is in many respects 
vague and indefinite. I pause at this moment to say that international 
law should be clarified and codified. The past construction of inter¬ 
national law leads to the conclusion that the right of blockade is limited 
to particular ports; it being required that the blockade shall be rendered 
effective by constant patrol. This rule, however, was perhaps not per¬ 
fectly clear and certain. It was doubtless because of this fact that England 
undertook to declare a blockade of the entire North Sea— a, thing that 
hitherto had been generally regarded as illegal. That was followed by 
Germany declaring a blockade of the English Channel and the waters 
in and about England; and that was followed by Germany undertaking 
to sweep all commerce from the seas. That brought us into the war. 

“But there was another reason. The world had been led to believe 
that America would not fight, and perhaps could not fight. We were 
not as well prepared as I wish we had been, but I shall not go into that. 
Many of us made mistakes along that line, and I do not care to argue 
it now; but Germany believed, more than any other people, that we could 
not fight. They thought that we were a lot of traders, either too proud or 
too lazy or too cowardly to fight, and so they threw the glove square in 
our face. They said, ‘You cannot help yourselves, even if you would.’ 
Ah! sirs, that mistake will never be made again. While woods grow and 
waters run the world will now know that Americans can and will fight. 
Never again, so long as we maintain our pride of race, will that mistake 
be made. They said we could not get ready to fight; but when the boys 
from the farm and tie anvil and the office were called on they came, a 
glorious concourse of indomitable souls. They went across the ocean, 
sometimes imperfectly armed, but that made no difference; they may 
not have had all the weapons they needed, but that did not daunt their 
courage. The cry upon their lips was: ‘Take us to the trenches.’ The 
only desertions from the American ranks were desertions of men who 
left their camps that they might serve upon the battle’s blazing line. 

“How well did they fight? I said the other day, and I repeat, the 
French had been driven back; gallantly they had retreated. The English 
lion, with the bloody froth dropping from his white fangs, facing the foe. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


573 


but yet being driven back; the French, with gallant heroism, carpeting 
the ground with their immortal dead; but still they were being driven 
back; until at last, in the agony of his soul, Haig cried out: ‘Our backs 
are to the wall, Britons, stand or die.’ Just then new sounds were heard 
coming from the rear. It was the mingled rebel yell and the Yankee 
cheer. They swept down through Chateau Thierry, through St. Mihiel, 
through Belleau Wood, on through the forests across the Rhine, until' 
they made themselves the masters of Berlin. The flag of the Republic 
floats today above the fortresses of the Teuton. 

“Sirs, that is our history. Can it be made better? Can you do better 
than that? Ah, my colleagues, why abandon the nationalism that has 
done so much for our country for the desperate experiment of inter¬ 
nationalism? The past rises before me like a dream. Again, I see the 
lantern in the old North Church; I hear the clatter of galloping feet as 
Paul Revere rides out into the night; I see the farmers gathering along 
the lanes of Lexington, and I hear the sharp reports of their muskets; 

I catch a glimpse of the next day when the minutemen made their heroic 
stand along the little stream spanned by the bridge immortalized by 
Emerson’s thrilling lines: 

“/By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 

' Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled. 

Here once the embattl’d farmers stood. 

And fired the shot heard round the world.’ 

“I see them at Valley Forge as they walk amidst the snows and frosts, 
staggering and hungry, falling dead, but not surrendering. I behold 
Washington with his troops crossing the Delaware to attack the Hessian 
horde. I see the flag of Cornwallis above the battlements of Yorktown 
lowered and the Starry Banner go up amidst the tears and cheers of Wash¬ 
ington and his soldiers. Since then no despot has dared try to drag 
it down. Shall it be now supinely surrendered into the hands of 
foreigners? Shall it be turned back to the monarchs we defied? Shall we 
yield the sovereignty thus gloriously obtained?” 

—James A. Reed, ^Analysis of the League of Nations,' U. S. Senate 
Feb. 22, 1919. 

WASHINGTON AND THE REVOLUTION 

“We look back to the glorious fields of the Revolution. We look back 
to the hours when American women stood in their cabin doors and beat 
back the native savage and kept the homes while the fathers stood with 
Washington upon the battle front. We look back to those birth hours of 
liberty, when from the womb of holy patriotism there sprang the infant 
giant America. We look back to forests that were conquered, leveled, 
to streams that were bridged, to a continent conquered, to vast cities 
raised by the magic of genius, to churches and schoolhouses that crown 
the hills of a vast land. We look to homes where men and women have 
lived in equality and in liberty. We look to all the world and see the 
oppressed of every land turning their eyes to us, gaining inspiration from 
our example and strength to break their masters’ chains. This is the past 
to which we look, and standing towering above the picture is the majestic 
form of George Washington, father of this Republic, the greatest of the 
dead, incomparably the superior of any of the living.” 

— Jas. A. Reed, 'The League of Nations,' Debate with Senator 
Hitchcock, U. S. Senate, Mch. 2, 1920. 


THOS. B. REED (1839-1902), Maine 

MONOPOLY AND TRUSTS 

“‘Monopolj^’ said Horace Greeley, a doctor of laws, and once a 
candidate of the Democratic party for the presidency, ‘monopoly is, 
perhaps, the most perverted and misapplied word in our much-abused 
mother tongue.’ How very tame this language is. I suppose that during 
the ten years last past I have listened in this hall to more idiotic raving, 
more pestiferous rant on that subject than on all the others put together. 
And yet I do not regret it. What a beautiful sight it is to see the revenue- 
reform orator go into action against monopoly. Nelson, as he stood 
blazing with decorations on the decks of the Victory on the fatal day of 
Trafalgar; Napoleon at Friedland, as the Guard went cheering and 
charging by; Thomas Sayers, as he stripped for the championship of Eng¬ 
land when Heenan had crossed the lifting waters; the eagle soaring to 
his eyrie; the royal man-eating Bengal tiger in his native jungle; nay, 
the very bull himself, the strong bull of Bashan, as he uplifts his bellow 
over the rocky deserts of Palestine, are all but pale reminders of one of 
these majestic creatures. And yet, outside the patent office, there are 
no monopolies in this country, and there never will be. Ah, but what is 
that I see on the far horizon’s edge, with tongue of lambent flame and eye 
of forked fire, serpent-headed and griffin-clawed? Surely it must be the 
great new chimera, ‘Trust.’ Quick, cries every masked member of the 
Ways and Means. Quick, let us lower the tariff. Let us call in the British. 
Let them save our devastated homes. Courage, dear brethren. Be 
not too much disturbed. The Lord will reign even if the board of mayor 
and aldermen should adjourn.” 

— Thos. B. Reed, in House of Representatives, on the Mills Bill, May 
19, 1888. 

PUBLIC SENTIMENT 

‘‘There is, and always has been, one tremendous ruler of the human 
race, a ruler so great that no other despotism has been possible, and that 
ruler is that combination of the opinions of all, that leveling up of universal 
sense which is called Public Sentiment. That is the ever-present regulator 
and police of humanity. But it behooves a man to take heed before he 
begins to run counter to it, whether he longs to proclaim a great principle 
which will free a race, or merely wants to wear his hair long down his back. ’ ’ 
— Thos. B. Reed, from an Address, July 30, 1885, at Colby University, 
Waterville, Maine. 

IMPERIALISM 

“Wisdom of course did not die with forefathers even as wise and famous 
as were ours. The world does not roll about the sun a hundred and 
twenty times and about itself forty and four thousand times without 
evolving conditions and awakening new notions, some , of which are for 
the good of the world. Nevertheless all new notions are not good. Indeed, 
we know that most of them are bad and that all of them should pass under 
careful scrutiny before being put into action. The spoken, and even 
the written, word may be harmless and fly away, being winged, but 
deeds cannot depart and are never effaced from the history of the race. 
We may reclimb heights from which we have fallen, but oftener nations 
find that, after a mistake, there is no place for repentance, even if they 
seek it carefully with tears. * * * Human selfishness pervades all 

human life. It is the mainspring of human action. Any man’s selfishness 
would vTeck all his surroundings were it not for the antidote, which is 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


575 


the selfishness of the rest. Therefore, if men are to be justly governed 
they must participate in government. Do I mean to say that all men are 
of equal power? No, they cannot be. But give every man equal rights, 
and intellect and wisdom will justify themselves by persuading where they 
have no power of command. 

“The highest level of liberty in any land is the liberty of the meanest 
citizen. Do you want another example from the history of our new 
ally, with whom we are to unite to propagate hberty by force? Already 
plans are being matured to govern with military power the lands we are 
conquering until such time as the blessings of liberty can be fully vouch¬ 
safed. So England began with Ireland. Read what Charles James Fox 
said a hundred years ago in the famous speech of Feb. 3, 1800. Ireland 
began under a military despotism, and remained under the tutelage of 
a nation we deem worthy to be our companion in the regeneration of the 
world. Did this good nation govern unselfishly? Did she make out of 
Ireland more than Ireland could have made out of herself? After more 
than a century of dreadful struggle, England, proud, obstinate England, 
found no other way than to admit to equal rights the enslaved land, 
‘the aliens in blood and religion.’ So in the whole history of the world 
there is no peace for the governors until the governed are governors 
also. * * * ^ 

“Public opinion is the foundation and the sole foundation on which 
any nation can rest. But it is public opinion sohdified by discussion, by 
full and mature reflections guided by the past as well as the present. 
The voice of those crying aloud in the market-places is not the voice 
of God, either for time or eternity. There was once a city where for the 
space of two sohd hours all the people cried out, ‘Great is Diana of the 
Ephesians!’ For two hours public sentiment was unanimous. Yet in 
that very city at that time Paul was preaching the Living God. * * * 

“But these things, strong as they are, are but trifles beside the great 
risk we run of forgetting principles of our government. Our Fathers 
fought them once, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural teUs the solemn story 
in words as stately and sublime as ever flowed from bps inspired by God. 
I do not compare our possible governing of others without their partici¬ 
pation to the sin of human slavery; but, as I remember the story of the 
Indians whom we have governed at home and of the negroes we are 
governing at home, that time may come when I can claim the credit of 
great moderation speaking of the government of people utterly unknown 
four thousand miles away.” ‘ 

— T}ios. B. Reed. The above was found in his manuscript on Im~ 
perialism. 

THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE 

“Progress must be of a race as a whole, and not of a few individuals 
who are to be leaders and masters. * * * assemblages of men 

are different from the men themselves. Neither intelligence nor culture 
can prevent a mob from acting as a mob. The wise man and the knave 
lose their identity and merge themselves into a new being. The habits of 
individual life are such that we have to be in constant control of our¬ 
selves. We know our limited powers and do not purpose to attempt what 
we cannot do. * * * Our constitution and system of government are in full 
recognition of the fact that our people are to govern and also of the 
equally important fact that they should have a chance to learn how to 
govern. We elect a House every two years. We elect a President for 
four years and a Senate for six. Why are there these differences ? Why 
should not the people have opportunity to change all of them every two 
years and make a clean sweep as it seems to them good ? Simply because 
wisdom is not born in an hour. Our forefathers believed that the dis¬ 
cussions involved in changing during three different periods the Executive 
and the two chambers, would involve also an education of the whole 


576 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


people which would make their judgment of the people of this country 
sound. Three times within my experience the judgment of the people 
has been changed on three great questions. That the final judgment 
is correct is not for me to say in this presence, but as a rule I think I 
should prefer the judgment of men after discussion rather than without 
discussion. It is a great thing to have institutions so framed that the 
people can educate themselves before they are called upon to act. 

“* * * Are we not the victims of destiny, with our lot marked 

out for us beyond our will and ken? Is not this a world under control 
of the survival of the fittest, not the fittest to enjoy the society of the 
Almighty, but the fittest to trample on each other? I do not believe it. 
Survival of the strongest may be new to science, but it is not new to 
religion. The strong, remorseless arm striking down the weak and pos¬ 
sessing the earth, the unpitying tramp of the horse’s hoofs devastating 
the land, are well known to the years that have gone, and they filled 
the thoughts of man; but they are no longer supremely prevalent on earth. 
Justice and equality and the rights of man have an ever-increasing sway, 
and the power of the mighty in arms is every day more and more mit¬ 
igated by that justice and love which satisfies the longings of the human 
heart better than even riches or superiority of power. Whatever con¬ 
tribution any man makes to humanity and justice will nob jbe lost, but 
will be gathered up and be among the treasures of the Almighty.” 

— Thomas B. Reed, from an Address at the 100th Anniversary of 
Bowdoin College, July 25, 1902. 

FAME 

“We all know too sadly well that oblivion begins to devour the might¬ 
iest when dead, and has in all ages been so greedy as to overtake some 
men yet hving. Human fame, even of those who are at pains to preserve 
their memories, is that the State of Maine, when called upon to place in 
the National Hall of Statuary the figure of the son she most willingly 
remembers, has passed by men of his time certainly more famous but not 
greater, and chosen William King. It seems also highly fitting, both as 
a memorial and as an example, that in that Hall which has so often 
echoed to the voices of many men whose fame seemed to fill the country 
but who are now forgotten, because their aims were selfish and their 
purposes petty, should stand for the statue of William King, placed there, 
not because the land is resonant with his name, but because he did his 
state enduring service.” 

— Thos. B. Reed, in presenting to the House of Representatives the 
claims of William King for a place hi Statuary Hall, Jan. 18, 1878. 

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ADVOCATED 

“No reason on earth can be given by those who claim suffrage as a 
right of manhood which does not make it a right of womanhood also. 
If the suffrage is to be given man to protect him in his fife, liberty and 
property, the same reasons urge that it be given to woman, for she has 
the same fife, liberty and property to protect. If it be urged that her 
interests are so bound up in those of man they are sure to be protected, 
the answer is that the same argument was urged as to the merging in 
the husband of the wife’s right of property, and was pronounced by the 
judgment of manldnd fallacious in practice and in principle. If the natures 
of men and women are so like that for this reason no harm is done by 
suppressing women, what harm can be done by elevating them to equality? 
If their natures be different, what right can there be in refusing represen¬ 
tation to those who might take juster views about many social and political 
questions? * * * We conclude then that every reason which in this country 
bestows the ballot upon man is equally applicable to the proposition to 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


577 


bestow the ballot upon woman; that in our judgment there is no founda¬ 
tion for the fear that woman will thereby become unfitted for all the duties 
she has hitherto performed.” 

— Thos. B. Reed, in a speech in the House in favor of Woman Suffrage. 
HALF-TRUTHS 

“Half-truths are simple, but the whole truth is the most comphcated 
thing on earth, * * * Talk about the ‘survival of the fittest,’ but 

they never complete the sentence. It is not the abstractly fittest who 
survive. The sentence really is, ‘the survival of the fittest to survive;’ 
that is the fittest for a given environment. If you cast a minnow and the 
magnificient bull of Bashan into the Atlantic Ocean, there is no question 
which is the nobler organism, the abstractly fittest, but the great bull of 
Bashan will perish and the minnow will survive in that environment.” 

REBUKE TO A PHARISEE GAMBLER 

“It is a curious thing, perhaps, but I never made a bet on a horse, 
a card, or anything else in my fife,” said a Congressman. 

“I wish I could say that!” said a listening Senator. 

“Why can’t you?” asked Mr. Reed. “Our friend did.” 

A STATESMAN 

“A statesman is a successful politican who is dead,” said Reed. 

A correspondent telegraphed, “Why don’t you die then and become a 
statesman?” 

“No,” said Reed, “Fame is the last infirmity of a noble mind.” 

NECESSITIES 

“Necessities may mean anything men are willing to work for.* * * 

Even a peacock feather is a necessity in the early stages of glory,” 

INVENTION 

“It took 4,000 years of Pagan and 15 centuries of Christian civilization 
to produce a two-pronged fork, and another century to bring it into use.” 

REBUKE TO WM. M. SPRINGER 

Mr. Springer, a Representative from Illinois, was declaring with large 
solemnity that, in the words of Henry Clay, “he had rather be right than 
be President.” “The gentleman need not be disturbed,” interjected 
Speaker Reed, “he will never be either.” 

TREAT THE DEAD TENDERLY 

“If we ever learn to treat the hving with the tenderness with which 
we instinctively treat the dead, we shall then have a civilization well 
worth distributing.” 

THE PRESIDENT OP HARVARD 

“The President of Harvard, in his lamented entrance into the Demo¬ 
cratic party, was evidently thinking more of the courage of his convic¬ 
tions than the sense of them. * * * Why should a man’s advice, 

who is not and never seriously intends to be a candidate for office, be so 
much loftier than all others?” 


578 


GBEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE PEOPLE GOVERN 

“Ultimately the people govern. There are ostentatious actors here 
and there, who stud the stage with panoply or with clanging arms, who 
seem to do many things; but in the end the popular feeling has its way.” 

ALL CONGRESS CRAZY 

Reed called on the family of a fellow-member of Congress, who was 
very ill, his wife said that he was out of his head much of the time and 
did not know what he was talking about. “He ought to come up to the 
House,” replied Reed, “they are all that way up there.” 

WRONG 

“Wrong is never so weak as in its hour of triumph.” 

“A KNOCK-DOWN ARGUMENT” 

While speaking at South Berwick, near the end of his talk, a man 
came down in his seat with a crash. Reed at once secured the attention 
of his audience by saying, “Well, you must at least credit me with making 
a knock-down argument.” 

SUBSTRACTING HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 

Alluding to two of his colleagues in the House, he said, “They never 
open their mouths without substracting from the sum of human intelli¬ 
gence.” 

WASHINGTON MALARIA 

Much used to be said about Washington malaria, and one day someone 
suggested to Reed that the term was employed often to cover the effects 
of drinking too much whiskey. “Washington malaria,” said he, “can 
be bought for about two dollars a gallon.” 

Thos. B. Reed was graduated from Bowdoin College, in 1860, at 21 
years of age (B. 1839-D. 1902); was supported the last three months of 
his senior year by a loan from Wm. P. Fessenden of $200, the latter’s 
son being a classmate. When admitted to the bar, in California, Jndge 
Wm. P. Wallace asked if he thought the Legal Tender Act, recently 
passed, was constitutional. Reed answered that he thought it was. 
Wallace^thereupon said that another young man answered that morning 
the same question the other way. “We will recommend you both favor¬ 
ably, as we think that all young men who can answer great constitutional 
questions off-hand, ought to be admitted to the bar.” After being 
Representative and State Senator, Attorney-General of the state, ’70-’2, 
Member of Congress, ’77-’99, twice Speaker, in which office, he earned 
the title of “Czar Reed,” by bodly counting those present to make a 
quorum whether they voted or not (which the Supreme Court sustained 
as legal, and which was adopted by his political opponents), he was a 
candidate for the Presidency in ’96 and in ’99 resigned from Congress 
and joined as senior member the leading law-firm of Simpson, Thacher 
and Barnum, of N. Y. City. 

Says Henry C. Lodge: “He was easily the greatest parliamentary 
leader I ever saw; the finest and most effective debater I have ever seen; 
and the only man then in public life who could have carried out his rule 
of counting a quorum during the stormy session of ’89-’90.” 


GEORGE ROBERTSON (1790-1874), Kentucky 

STARE DECISIS 

“An adjudged point, unreasonable or inconsistent with analogy or 
principle, should not be regarded as conclusive evidence of the law, 
unless it shall have been long acquiesced in, or more than once affirmed, 
and unless on a survey of all material considerations, you feel that it is 
better to adhere to it than, by overruling it, to produce uncertaintj^ 
and surprise. Stare decisis (decided cases) should be thus, and only thus, 
understood and applied. Stability and uniformity require that authority, 
even when conflicting with principle, should sometimes decide what the 
law is. But, in all questionable cases, follow the safer guides, reason and the 
harmony of the law in aU its parts.”— Geo. Robertson, of Ky. 

RULES OF CONDUCT FOR A LAWYER 

“I never encouraged a litigious spirit, often induced antagonist parties 
to compromise, and oftener induced forbearance in frivolous and vindictive 
cases in which the least professional countenance would have bred vesa- 
tious litigation. I had more success in argument before the court than 
a jury. I never had much of the ad captandvm (ability to catch the 
rabble). I was quite fluent and was accurate in style and pronunciation. 
I relied on lucid order and the logic of ideas, on the law and the facts. I 
never wrote out or commited any portion of a speech at the bar, nor was 
I accustomed to take notes of the testimony, flnding that they confused 
and diluted my argument. I generally relied altogether on my memory, 
which, whenever it was my sole reliance, never failed as to any material 
fact or witness; and thus retaining all that was essential, and unembar¬ 
rassed by nonessentials, my memory was more vivid, my ideas more con¬ 
secutive and clear, and my argument more vigorous, concentrated and 
impressive. I was a clear, chaste and ingenious debator, but was never 
what is generally considered an orator. I succeeded in many hopeless 
cases, but seldom lost a good one. I charged low fees, and was so indulgent 
in the collection of them as to lose about half of my earnings. I never 
deceived a client, nor played on his ignorance or fear or confldence in me 
to exort an exorbitant fee, and invariably when I had done a chent’s 
business without a special contract I charged the minimum fee for the 
like service. As early as 1815 I had by study and practice become a good 
lawyer, and when only twenty-flve years old I thought I knew more 
law than I think I do now at the mellow age of sixty-eight. This was not 
the effect of juvenile vanity so much as of comparative ignorance; and my 
case in that respect is every man’s case who progresses in knowledge. 
The sciolist is dogmatic and vain because he is ignorant of the vast field 
of knowledge unseen by his circumscribed vision. The higher he rises 
the more extended becomes his horizon of unexplored knowledge; and the 
more he learns, the more he feels the insignificance and uncertainty of 
all human knowledge compared with a philosophical cyclopedia of uni¬ 
versal truth; consequently the more he knows the more he sees which he 
does not know, and his humility increases pari passu with his progress 
in true science.” 

— Was 15 yrs. Judge of Sup. Ct, Ky., and 7 yrs. Judge of the Appellate 
Court. 

BRIEFED BOTH SIDES 

“Made a habit of briefing for himself both sides of every cause which 
came before him for decision. He would assume the place of advocate 


580 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


on the one side and summarize the points in favor of that side, and then 
would undertake to present arguments in favor of the opposite side. 
By this method he was enabled the more surely to evolve the real merits 
of every case which came before him. 

—Samuel Mackay Wilson, ^4- Gt. Am. Lawyers,' 403-4. 

FORENSIC ETHICS 

The rules laid down by Judge Robertson and described by him in the 
phrase “Forensic Ethics,” may be epitomized as follows: 

1. To be a gentleman. 

2. To deal fairly with and by one’s clients. 

3. To yield due deference to the courts and to demand a corresponding 
respect from the courts. 

4. To be courteous, just and honorable in one’s intercourse with pro¬ 
fessional brethren. 

5. To avoid avarice, “A lawyer can hardly be both mercenary and 
just.” 

6. To insist, nevertheless, on adequate compensation for services 
fairly rendered. 

7. Never to drum for clients. 

8. To frown down all pettifoggery. 


BEECHER’S ORATORY 

“Henry Ward Beecher is, in my judgment, the greatest orator I ever 
heard, and easily takes a place among the greatest orators of the world. 
Less persuasive than Gladstone, less keen and repier-like than Wendell 
Phillips, less dramatic than John B. Gough, less polished than George 
William Curtis, less weighty than Daniel Webster, he combined in one 
ever-variable oratory the qualities of all, and was alternately persuasive, 
keen, dramatic, polished, weighty. His kaleidoscopic mind kept the habit¬ 
ual hearer always wondering what surprise would greet him in the next 
sentence. It was not, however, chiefly these oratorical qualities that 
gave him his influence; it was his rare combination of practical common 
sense and spiritual vision. He disregarded the phrases and forms of 
religion and cared only for its essential spirit. Under his leadership 
there was developed a church whose bond of union was spiritual, not 
intellectual.” 

—Lyman Abbott's ^Reminiscences', 351. 


THE LIBRARY OF THE BIBLE 

“The Bible is not a book, but a library; perhaps I should say a litera¬ 
ture. It is composed of sixty-six different books, written by between 
forty and fifty different authors; written centuries apart, in different 
languages, to different peoples, for different purposes, in different literary 
forms. It is the selected literature of fifteen centuries; it includes law, 
history, poetry, fiction, biography and philosophy. It is to be read as a 
literature, judged as a literature. One may, therefore, reject a book 
from this collection of literature and yet believe in the literature. It is 
not like a painting which neither is or is not the works of one master; 
it is a gallery of paintings, in which some works may be originals, and 
others copies. To believe in the Bible is one thing, to believe in the canonic- 
ity of every book in the Bible is a very different thing. Luther believed 
in the Bible, though he rejected the Epistle of James.” —layman Abbott. 




SAMUEL ROMILLY (1757-1818), England 

ROUSSEAU 

“Though the writings of Rousseau contained many errors on the most 
important subjects, they may yet be read with great advantage. There 
is, perhaps, no writer so capable of inspiring a young mind with an ardent 
love of virtue, a fixed hatred of oppression, and a contempt for all false 
glory, as Rousseau; and, I ascribe, in a great degree, to the irrational 
admiration of him which I once entertained, those dispositions of mind, 
from which I have derived my greatest happiness throughout life.” 

—Samuel Romilly, England. 

He had a practice of from 8,000 to 9,000 pounds a year, $40,000 to 
$45,000. Died by his own hand, in his 62nd year, because of grief for his 
wife. 


FRANKLIN 

“Of all the celebrated persons whom, in my life, I have chanced to see. 
Dr. Franklin, both from his appearance and his conversation, seemed to 
be the most remarkable.” 

—Romilly met Franklin in Paris, in 1783, when the former was 26 
and the latter 81. 


BURKE 

“Certainly, never had any writer a more luxuriant imagination than 
Burke; he is more a poet than an orator; but do not you think that he 
indulges that poetical imagination to a fault. When he has once hold of 
a beautiful image, he forgets that its only use is to illustrate; the orna¬ 
ment becomes with him the subject, and he employs many phrases to 
decorate and enrich the figure, while the matter of his speech is quite 
neglected.”— Romilly, in letter to Roget, of London, Mch. 2If, 1782. 

PITT’S ORATORY 

“He (Pitt) possesses those talents which are said to have been pecuhar 
to his father (Chatham), warmth of utterance, command of language, 
strength and clearness of reasoning, and, above all, an energy and irresis¬ 
tible vigor of eloquence.” 

— Romilly, in letter to Roget, London, June, 11 1782. 

RELIGION 

“You know how dangerous an engine religion is, when employed 
upon the minds of the ignorant; so dangerous, indeed, that it is formidable 
in any hands, however weak and contemptible.” 

— Romilly, speaking of the Lord George Gordon Riots, in London, hy 
the Protestants against the Catholics, in 1780. 


COMMON-PLACE BOOK 

“As I read, I formed a common-place book; which has been of great 
use to me, even to the present day. It is, indeed, the^only way in which 
law reports can be read with much advantage.”—8am’/ Romilly. 


582 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


RELIEF FOR SUFFERER TO DIE 

“Considering what she (Mrs. Facquier) has gone through for many 
years past, one cannot call it a cessation of hfe, but the conclusion of 
a lingering death. * * * Half the terrors of death are of our own 

creation.”— Said by Romilly, in 1781. 

TRUE OBJECT OF ORATORY 

“The greatest eloquence is in itself but an object of vain and transient 
admiration. It is only when ennobled by the uses to which it is applied, 
when directed to great and virtuous ends, to the protection of the oppressed, 
to the enfranchisement of the enslaved, to the extension of knowledge, 
to dispelling the clouds of ignorance and superstition, to the advance¬ 
ment of the best interests of the country, and the enlarging the sphere 
of human happiness, that it becomes a national benefit and a public 
blessing. It is because the powerful talents, of which we are now deprived, 
have been uniformly exerted in the pursuit and promotion of such objects, 
that I consider our loss as one of the greatest which, in the present state 
of the country, we could possibly have sustained.” ^ 

—From eulogy on Mr. Horner — Romilly. 

URGED REFORM IN CRIMINAL LAWS 

“I have long thought that it was the duty of every man, unmoved 
either by bad report or by good report, to use aU the means which he 
possessed for the purpose of advancing the well-being of his fellow- 
creatures: and I know not any mode by which I can so effectually advance 
that well-being, as by endeavoring to improve the criminal laws of my 
country. * * * It is not from light motWes, from no fanciful notions 

of benevolence, that I have ventured to suggest any alteration in the crim¬ 
inal law of England. It has originated in many years’ refiection, and in 
the long-established beUef that a mitigation of the severe penalties of 
our law will be one of the most effectual modes to preserve and advance 
the humanity and justice for which this country is so eminently dis¬ 
tinguished. Since the last session of parliament, I have repeatedly 
reconsidered the subject: I am more and more firmly convinced of the 
strength of the foundation upon which I stand; and even if I had doubted 
my own conclusions, I cannot forget the ability with which I was supported 
within these walls; nor can be insensible to the humane and enlightened 
philosophy by which, in contemplative life, this advancement of landness 
has been recommended. I cannot, therefore, hastily abandon a duty 
which, from my success in life, I owe to my profession; which, as a member 
of this house, I owe to you and to my country; and which, as a man 
blessed with more than common prosperity, I owe to the misguided and 
unfortunate.”—(Samwe/ Romilly 


In Henry Roscoe’s ‘Lives of Eminent British Lawyers,’ in which the 
lives of 14 English lawyers are sketched, the portraits only of Coke, Hale, 
Blackstone, Mansfield and RomiUy are given, leaving out Selden, Guilford, 
Jefferies, Somers, Wilmot, Ashburton, Thurlow, Jones and Erskine, also 
sketched. 


WOMAN 

“There is nothing by which I liave through life more profited, than by 
the just observations, the good opinions, and sincere and gentle encourage¬ 
ment of amiable and sensible women .”—Samuel Romilly. 


GBEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


583 


ROMILLY A REFORMER OP CRIMINAL LAW 

“The reform of the criminal law had long been advocated in vain by 
two large-minded members of the House of Commons, Sir Samuel Romilly 
and Sir James Mackintosh. As the law stood at the beginning of the 
century no less than 200 crimes were punishable by death. Anyone, 
for instance, who stole fish out of a pond, who hunted in the king’s forests, 
or who injured Westminster Bridge, was to be hanged. Sometimes these 
harsh laws were put in force, but more often juries refused to convict 
even the guilty, preferring rather to perjure themselves by delivering a 
verdict which they knew to be untrue than send to death a person who 
had merely committed a trivial offense. Again and again the House of 
Commons had voted for an alteration of the law, but the House of Lords 
had obstinately refused to pass the Bills sent up to them with this object. 
In 1823 Peel brought in Bills for the abolition of the death penalty for 
about 100 crimes, and the House of Lords at last gave way, now that the 
abolition was recommended by a minister.” 

— S. R. Gardiner's Student's Hist, of England, p. 885. 

PLAN OF HIS LIFE, BY HIMSELF 

“I had soon laid out the plan of my life (then about 20) which was 
to follow my profession of the law just as far as was necessary, and to 
aspire to fame by my literary pursuits. * * * j began, therefore, 

to exercise myself in prose compositions; and, judging translations to be 
the most useful exercise for forming a style, I rendered into English the 
finest models of writing that the Latin language afforded; almost all the 
speeches of Livy, very copious extracts from Tacitus, the whole of Sallust, 
and many of the finest passages of Cicero. With the same view of improv¬ 
ing my style, I read and studied the best English writers, Addison, 
Swift, Bohngbroke, Robertson, and Hume, noting down every peculiar 
propriety and happiness of expression which I met with, and which I 
was conscious that I should not have used myself.”—‘I Life of Romilly,' 30. 

FRANCE INCAPABLE OF LIBERTY 

“How could we ever be so deceived in the character of the French 
nation as to think them capable of liberty! Wretches, who, after all their 
professions and boasts about liberty^, and patriotism, and courage, 
and dying, and after taking oath, after oath, at the very moment when 
their country is invaded and an enemy is marching through it unresisted, 
employ whole days in murdering women, and priests, and prisoners! 
Others, who can deliberately load their wagons full of victims, and bring 
them like beasts to be butchered in the metropoHs; and then (who are worse 
than these) the cold instigators of these murders, who while blood is 
streaming round them on every side, permit this carnage to go on, and 
reason about it, and defend it, even applaud it and talk about the 
example they are setting to all nations. One might as well think of estab¬ 
lishing a republic of tigers in some remote forest in Africa, as maintaining 
a free government among such monsters.” 

—From letter to M. Dumont, Lincoln's Inn, Sev- 10, 1792. '‘2 Life 

of Romilly,' k-3. 

SCARLETT’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“He was a man of reserved habits and cold demeanor; but under 
that exterior were covered the warmest and most generous emotions. 
When excited by controversy his temper was too easily provoked, 
and his opponent felt that he was very intolerant and sometimes too 
severe upon bad reasoning. As a speaker though he was often by the 


584 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


force of his feeling led into something like declamation, yet he was success¬ 
ful in affecting the passions. He did not persuade by his rhetoric, but 
convinced by his logic. His reasoning was acute and perspicuous. His 
sagacity in detecting, and felicity in expressing the sophistry of his 
antagonist were among the first of his oratorical merits. These always 
made him happy and terrible in reply. His application to study and 
his quickness in understanding what he studied were never surpassed. 
His reading of all sorts was immense. I never met with a man who so 
universally was acquainted with ancient and modern literature and 
history. In the midst of his famous business he found time to read every 
book that had any real value. Even upon the subject of the last romance 
he was the best man to consult. There was something extraordinap- 
in his facility of reading which enabled him to wade through a book in 
an hour which would have occupied most men a day. He did not stop 
at words or sentences, but took in almost a page at a glance.” 

—Peter Campbell Scarlett's Memoir: 12 ^Am. Law Review),' Jf-9. 

BROUGHAM ON HIS ABILITY AND ORATORY 

“The observer who gazes upon the character of this great man is 
naturally struck first of all with its most prominent feature, and that is 
the rare excellence which we have now marked, so far above every gift 
of the understanding, and which throws the lustre of mere genius into 
the shade. An extraordinary reach of thought; great powers of attention 
and of close reasoning; a memory quick and retentive; a fancy eminently 
brilliant, but kept in perfect discipline by his judgment and his taste, 
which was nice, cultivated and severe, without any of the squeamishness 
so fatal to vigor,—these were the qualities which, under the guidance 
of the most persevering industry, and with the stimulus of a lofty am¬ 
bition, rendered him unquestionably the first advocate and the most 
profound lawyer of the age in which he flourished; placed him among 
the ornaments of the Senate; and would in all likehhood have given 
him the foremost place among them all, had not the occupation of a 
laborious profession necessarily engrossed a disproportionate share of 
his attention, and made political pursuits fill a subordinate place in the 
scheme of his life. 

“His eloquence united all the graces of oratory, both as regards the 
manner and the substance. No man argued more closely when the 
understanding was to be addressed; no man declaimed more powerfully 
when indignation was to be aroused or the feelings moved. His language 
was choice and pure; his powers of invective resembled rather the grave 
authority with which the judge puts down a contempt, or punishes an 
offender than the attack of an advocate against his adversary and his 
equal. His imapnation was the minister whose services was never for 
an instant admitted. His sarcasm was tremendous, not always very 
sparingly employed. His manner was perfect, in voice, in figure, in a 
countenance of singular beauty and dignity; nor was anything in his 
oratory more striking or more effective than the heartfelt sincerity which 
it throughout displayed, in topic, in diction, in tone, in look, in gesture. 

* * * * His political adversary, Mr. Charles Long, afterwards 

Lord Farnborough, was wont to say, and he was one of the most ex¬ 
perienced and correct observers, that he never was out of his place 
while Romilly spoke without finding that he had cause to lament his 
absence.”— 1 ^Historical Sketches of Statesmen,' 250-3. 


THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919), New York 


TEST OF A BOOK 

“Of course there are books which a man or woman uses as instruments 
of profession—law books, medical books, cookery books and the like. 
I am not speaking of these, for they are not properly ‘books’ at all; 
they come in the category of time tables, telephone directories and other 
useful agencies of civilized hfe. I am speaking of books that are meant 
to be read. Personally, granted that these books are decent and healthy, 
the one test to which I demand that they all submit is that of being 
interesting. If the book is not interesting to the reader, then in all but 
an infinitesimal number of cases it gives scant benefit to the reader. Of 
course any reader ought to cultivate his or her taste so that good books 
will appeal to it, and trash won’t. But after this point has once been 
reached, the needs of each reader must be met in a fashion that will appeal 
to those needs. Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely 
more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by¬ 
product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, 
because I liked reading them, and the profit came in as a part of the 
enjoyment.”— Theodore Roosevelt in his Autobiography. 

UNDEBATABLE THINGS 

“There can be no greater waste of time than to debate about unde- 
batable things.” — Theodore Roosevelt. 

Neutrality: “Never be neutral between right and wrong.” 

— Theo. Roosevelt. 

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 

“I have DO patience with those who attack, who would destroy a man’s 
belief in religion,—no patience with those who would convert the Jew 
en masse, or the Catholic. More likely than not, where they succeed 
only in destroying something—they take something real away and give 
nothing in return, leaving the victim bankrupt. I am always sorry for 
the faithless man, just as I am sorry for the woman without virtue.” 

“Most men, I believe, are good citizens according to their lights. * * * 
After all, one’s religion is a private thing and one is apt to be misunder¬ 
stood. So, if I should say publicly or you should print what I have said 
here today, some half-baked ass of a preacher would attack me tomorrow 
for endorsing the Pope; another, because I am a Mohammedan at heart; 
and another would see in my toleration of the rabbi proof that my right 
name is Rosefelt or Rosenthal.” 

— To John J. Leary, Jr., in 1916,—'Talks with T. R.' 66-9. 

WELL-MEANING FOOLS 

“I have found that one of the real dangers of life are people who mean 
well. You never can tell what they will do. You can tell, or at least 
be on guard against those who do not mean well. Some of the greatest 
embarrassments of my life have been caused by people with the best 
intentions that ‘did not know it was loaded’. I ara not afraid of the 
crook who means evil. I can usually take care of him. But the well¬ 
meaning-fool—no man can guard against him, or his embarrassments. 
— To John J. Leary, Jr., after being pelted with 3000 peonies by 
admiring friends in Dayton, 0.—'Talks with T. R.' 287-8. 


586 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


SINCERITY 

“Isn’t it because the crowd always knows I am sincere that they are 
with me? It surely must be that in the years I have been in public life, 
folks have always found me sincere. Men do not always agree with me; 
in fact, many have been known to differ with me very seriously. Men 
who do not know me may doubt my sincerity, but no one who knows 
me does. At bottom, I do not believe any of the ‘Old Guard’, Bill Barnes 
included, would question my sincerity. They know better. * * * An orator 
which I am not, would get a crowd perhaps, but he could not hold them 
if he lacked sincerity, or if the people thought he did. We have all seen 
orators come and go, but none ever remained to a hold on any percep¬ 
tible part of the pubhc who at least did not carry the impression of 
sincerity. I have never hesitated to say a thing because it might be un¬ 
popular any more than I have ever found it at all necessary to say a 
thing I did not believe merely because they might be popular. In the 
end, as Emerson says, truth, however unpleasant, is the safest travehng 
companion. I have never found it at all necessary to pussyfoot or in¬ 
dulge in pleasing sophistries to hold any crowd. On the other hand, 
I have never hesitated to tell folks unpleasant things, I thought they 
should be told, any more than I have been afraid of hecklers. * * * if 
a man is sincere—he has nothing to fear. If he isn’t sincere—he has no 
business speaking. In the long run, sincerity must be the test of any 
public man.” 

—Said by Roosevelt to Jno. J. Leary, Jr., 1916. ^ Talks with T. R.,’ 70-4. 
FIGHT FOR YOUR COUNTRY AND YOUR RIGHTS 

“I want my country to be right; I hope she always will be right; but 
right or wrong, whatever she gets into I am going to be with her until 
she gets out. Then if there’s any correcting to do. I’ll try and do my share. 
And I am not prepared to concede the possibility of error in that doctrine 
by agreeing to debate it with anybody. 

“It is said to be bad ethics, just as it is said to be bad ethics, to teach a 
boy to defend himself or his baby brother, or his sister, or his mother. Some 
good people hold that a boy who gets into a fight, whether he be right or 
wrong, should be punished. I do not. If one of my boys was a bully, 
I’d try to thrash it out of him. If he would not defend himself against a 
bully, I’d thrash him till I had some degree of manhood in him. He’d 
require but one thrashing.” 

—Said by Roosevelt to John J. Leary, Jr. ‘Talks with T. R.\ 178. 
DEMOCRACY 

“Our democracy must prove itself effective in making the people 
healthy, strong and industrially productive, in securing justice, in in¬ 
spiring intense patriotism, and in making every man and woman within 
our borders realize that if they are not willing to serve the nation in time 
of need against all comers in war, they are not fit to be citizens of that 
nation in time of peace/’ 

THE MONEY GRUBBER 

“Money per se has never meant anything to me. I have never had so 
much that I did not have to work, and usually, I have had to consider 
carefully and plan my outlays. Otherwise I would have become bank¬ 
rupt. But I have always had all I needed for real comfort for myself and 
family in the modest style we would have preferred to live had we had 
the wealth of Croesus. In more recent years I have had a comfortable 
surplus, but it has meant very little to me except for what we may have 
been able to do with it. 


GHEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


587 


“Mind you, I do not undervalue money and I am not talking against 
thrift. What I mean is that the really wise person is he who tries to see 
money in its true perspective. The young man who is careful and thrifty 
—not miserly, but thrifty—makes the best citizen. Conversely, the man 
with a lot more money than he needs, who spends in lavish display, is 
not a good citizen, though he may think he is. His example to others, 
not so wealthy as he is bad; his influence upon others is bad. It all 
comes down to the question of service. The man with money, in an 
industry producing wealth and enriching the community, is doing real 
service. The man who, having money, devotes himseK to public service, 
not necessarily politics, because he is free from the need of earning a 
living, is a good citizen. His money is a blessing to him and a service 
to the community. But the money grubber—I do not understand him. 
I am sorry for him, I’m Pharisee enough to rejoice that I am not as he is.” 

—Roosevelt to Jno. J. Leary, Jr., ^ Talks with T. R.’, 208. 

BOASTING OF ONE’S SUPERIORITY 

“Whenever you find a man going around declaring he is as good as 
somebody else, rest assured he does not beheve he is, and his declaration 
of equality, or superiority is, in effect, an admission of inferiority. The 
man who is as good as the other feUow does not have to advertise the 
fact.” — Theo. Roosevelt. ‘Talks with T. R.,’ 225. 

ELIHU ROOT 

“Root’s life you might say, was one long fight. He had to fight for 
everything he ever got. All his Hfe he’d been doing business with big, 
domineering, strong-bitted men like the elder Morgan—men in the habit 
of having their own way in aU things. With them. Root simply had to 
stand up and fight to get them to do things the way he saw they ought to be 
done. 

“I haven’t the slightest doubt that on many an occasion he had to be¬ 
come rather strenuous to make his points stick, but I’ll wager he made 
them stick and that his employers were glad afterwards that he had made 
them stick. It was his idea of loyalty to give his associates the full 
benefit of everything he had in view, even if he had to fight to make them 
take it. 

“These habits he brought into the Cabinet and these made him, as I’ve 
said, the most valuable member. I have been fortunate in having a 
few such advisers as Root. * * * The man who cannot stand to have his 
plans and ideas criticised is a fool. The wise man will welcome criticism, 
so long as it is honest and intelligent. I know, and you do, men who want 
no one about that does not agree with them, men who are afraid of 
being told unpleasant truths. Such men are fools. In a long journey, 
as Emerson says, ‘The truth, however unpleasant, is the safest traveling 
companion’.”— ‘Talks with T. R.' 219-21. 

HENRY FORD 

“Henry Ford is a pretty good man for making cheap automobiles. 
He makes a good car for the money and in his sphere has done a very 
good work. But he won’t stick to his sphere. He would instruct Cosmos. 

‘ ‘It would not be so bad, if he knew anything about the matters outside 
of automobiles that he attempts to manage and direct. He does not 
seem to have the faintest idea of American history, or any history for 
that msbtter; he knows nothing of world politics, yet he sets himself up, 
with the aid of an army of press agents, as the man who must teach 
everybody. He has no conception of what we mean by Americanism 
and has an extreme idea of the importance and power of money. He is 


588 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ignorant, yet because be bas been so successful in motors, many, many 
persons, bardly as ignorant as bimself, tbink bim wise in all things and 
allow bim to influence their views. Henry, like Barnum, bas been a great 
advertiser. I do not say his peace-ship was an advertising dodge—I 
will give him credit for being sincere there—but I won’t say that be has 
not been given credit for a lot of philanthropy that was merely good 
business. Others of his schemes given much publicity, are imaginings 
that in others would attract no attention. He and his son Edsel make 
a precious pair. The exempting of that young man was a glaring bit of 
injustice. Had I had my way, he’d have gone into the trenches and taken 
his chances just as any poor man’s son had to go and take his chances. 
Instead, he is safe in Detroit. Cases hke this make fine material for 
demagogues who try to tell the ignorant this is a government for rich 
men.”— 'Talks with T. R.' 356-7. 

BE CAREFUL OF FAVORS 

“I shall have to decline with thanks. If I allow him to do anything 
for me, I shall have to do something for him later on. He knows that 
as well as I do, and I am simply not going to be under any obligation 
to him. He’s not the kind I want to be beholden to. A man should be 
as careful in accepting favors as he should be in making promises. If 
he’s careless in either, he soon finds he’s in trouble of one sort or another. 
There’s where many a man in politics has wrecked himself, exactly as 
men in business have gone bankrupt endorsing notes for friends.” 

—‘Talks With T. R.' 

WOODROW WILSON 

“Mr. Wilson never had an ideal in his life; he is merely a selfish pol¬ 
itician. * * * A case in point is this cry on which he was re-elected: ‘He 
kept us out of war.’ No one knows better than Mr. Wilson that Germany 
was at war on us and that under his direction we were backing into war 
stern foremost. It was a catch-cry, a cry calculated to attract the vote 
of the pacifists and the peace-at-any-price people. With its honesty, 
Mr. Wilson had no concern. His only interest was in the way it might 
work, might advance his political fortunes. * * * in time Mr. Wilson 
will be the best damned man in America since the days of James Bu¬ 
chanan and Andy Johnson, but that time is not now. When that time 
comes I shall be sorry for Mr. Wilson. He will not, however be sorry 
for himself. He will figuratively gather his cloak about him and from his 
great height look down upon and be sorrowfully contemptuous of those 
pigmies of mortals unable to see things as he sees, and has seen them. 
It will never occur to him that those who have ceased to acclaim him 
may by any chance be right and he be wrong.”—‘ Talks with T. R.’ 323-7. 

Roosevelt’s Motto: “All for each, and each for all.” 


GREAT LEADERS—SUMNER AND CONKLING 

“Great leaders, like Sumner and Conkling, could not be burlesqued; 
they were more grotesque than ridicule could make them; even Grant, 
who rarely sparkled in epigram, became witty on their account; and their 
egotism and factiousness were no laughing matter. They did permanent 
mischief, as Garfield, Blaine and even McKinley and John Hay were to 
feel.”—‘ The Education of Henry Adams,^ 261. 



JOHN ROSS (1770-1834), Pennsylvania 


THE COMMON LAW VENERATED 

“The common law is truly entitled to our highest veneration; and 
although it has been said by some to have been instituted by Brutus, 
the grandson of Aebeas, and the first King of England, who died when 
Samuel was judge of Isreal, and who wrote a book in the Greek tongue, 
which he called ‘The Laws of the Britons,’ and which he had collected 
from the laws of the Trojans, it is nevertheless not entitled to our venera¬ 
tion on account of its antiqtity; for nearly all that is valuable in it is 
comparatively of modern date. Neither is it entitled to our respect on 
account of the ancient, absurd, and subertitous modes of trial, none 
of which have the slightest rsemblance to our present trial by jury. 
Still less does it deserve our admiration on account of the feudal system, 
which imposed a restraint upon every effort to improve the jurisprudence of 
the country, and which prevented the adoption of those maxims of justice 
and equity which now render it the admiration of the enlightened jurist, 
and the favorite of the people. It is, however, entitled to our venera¬ 
tion, because it has, witMn the last two centuries, been moulded by the 
wisdom of the ablest statesmen, and a succession of learned and liberal- 
minded judges into a fiexible system, expanding and contracting its 
provisions, so as to correspond to the changes that are continually 
taking place in society by the progress of luxury and refinement. As 
the youthful skin of a vigorous child expands with its growth and 
accommodates itself to every department which the body, in its progress 
to maturity, makes of its powers, capacities, and energies, so does 
the common law, in order to suit the exigencies of society, possess the 
power of altering, amending, and regenerating itself.’’ 

—Justice John Ross. Snowdown v. Warder, 3 Rawle (Pa.), 103-4 

{1831). 


DEBTORS 

“What are the debtors in this country? They are the aspiring, the 
hopeful, the energetic, the audacious. They are the upbuilders, the design¬ 
ers, the men of initiative, of executive power and achievement. They are 
the constructive force in every community. As probably nine-tenths 
of the business of America depends in one form or another on credit, 
any system which made the dollars of a debt more valuable at the date 
of payment than at the date of borrowing was a system of robbery.’’ 

—Senator John P. Jones, of Nevada, U. S. Senate, May 12, 1890. 


HENRY ADAMS 

“By far the most valuable work on the early Presidencies is the monu¬ 
mental study of Jefferson and Madison by Henry Adams, whose nine 
volumes rest on prolonged research in both hemispheres and present a 
lucid record of foreign and domestic policy during sixteen eventful years ’’ 
— G. P. Gooch's 'History and Historians of the 19th Century', 409. 




ELIHU ROOT (1845- ), New York 

AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


“I am opposed to granting suffrage to women because I believe it 
would be a loss to woman, and an injury to the State. Suffrage implies 
not merely the easting of the ballot, but if it means anything, it means 
entering upon the field of political strife, and politics is modified war. 
In politics, there is struggle, strife, contention, bitterness, excitement, 
agitation, everything adverse to the true character of woman. Woman 
rules today by the sweet and noble influence of her character. Woman, 
in strife, becomes hard, harsh, unlovable, repulsive. True government 
is in the family, the true throne, in the household. The highest exercise 
of power is that which forms the conscience, influences the will, controls 
the impulses of men, and there today woman is supreme, and woman 
rules the world.”— At Albany, N. Y. 

SELF-RELIANCE, ANECDOTE ^ 

While making preparations to enter upon a law course in New York 
City, his father wishing to be helpful, offered to supply him with letters 
of introduction to a number of people of influence in the metropolis. 
“No,” the young man answered, “I am starting out to do this thing 
myself. I am going to make my own friends without any family pull. 
I want to find out whether I am a man or a mouse.” 

—Furnished by Albert W. Macy. 

ROOT ON THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION 

“The events of the last few years have taught us many lessons. We 
have learned that civilization is but a thin veneer, thinly covering the 
savage nature of man; that conventions, courtesies, respect for law, 
regard for justice and humanity, are acquired habits, feebly constraining 
the elemental forces of man’s nature against wild beasts and savage 
foes. We have been forced to perceive that a nation which fulfills the 
conditions on which alone it can continue to exist, which preserves its 
independence, and the liberty of its people, and makes its power a shield 
for the rights of its citizens,..must deal with greed and lust of conquest 
and power, and indil^erence to human rights. We have seen that neither 
the faith of treaties nor the law of nations affords protection to the 
weak against the aggression of the strong. We have begun to realize 
that America, with its vast foreign trade, with its citizens scattered over 
the whole earth, with millions of aliens upon its soil, with its constantly 
increasing participation in world-wide efforts for the benefit of mankind, 
with a thousand bonds of intercourse and intimacy, uniting it to other 
nations, is no longer isolated; that our nation can no longer live unto 
itself alone, or stand aloof from the rest of mankind; that we must play 
some part in the progress of civilization, recognize some duties as correla¬ 
tive to our rights. For the first time within the memory of men now 
living, the international relations of the United States, long deemed of 
trifling consequence, are recognized as vital. How can this nation which 
loves peace and intends justice, avoid the curse of militarism, and at 
the same time, preserve the independence, defend its territory, protect 
the lives and liberty and property of its citizens? How can we prevent 
the same principles of conduct, the same forces of military power which 
are exhibited in Europe from laying hold upon the vast territory, and 
practically undefended wealth of the new world? Can we expect im- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


591 


muiiity? How shall we play our part in the world? Have selfish living 
and factional quarreling and easy prosperity, obscured the spiritual 
vision of our country? Has the patriotism of a generation never sum¬ 
moned to sacrifice become lifeless? Is our nation one, or a discordant 
multitude? Have we still national ideals? Will anybody live for them? 
Or are we all for ease and comfort and wealth, at any price? Confronted 
by such questions as these and the practical situations which give rise to 
them, is the country satisfied to trust itself again in the hands of the 
Democratic party? 

“When a president and secretary of state have been lawfully established 
in office, the power of initiative in foreign affairs rests with them. The 
nation is in their hands, theirs is the authority, and theirs the duty, to 
adopt and to act upon policies, subject to such laws as Congress may 
enact within Constitutional limits. Parliamentary opposition can take 
no affirmative step; can accomplish no affirmative action. The expression 
of public opinion can do nothing except as it produces an influence 
upon the minds of those officers who have the la^ul power to conduct 
our foreign relations. Their policy is the country’s policy, because it is 
they who are authorized to act for the country. While they are working 
out their policy all opposition, all criticism, all condemnation, are at 
the risk of weakening the case of one’s own country and frustrating the 
efforts of its lawful representatives to succeed in what they are seeking 
to accomplish for the country’s benefit. An American should wish the 
representatives of his country to succeed whatever may be their party, 
unless there be wrong-doing against conscience. However much he may 
doubt the wisdom of their course, he should help them where he can, 
and refrain from placing obstacles in their way. 

“But when the president and secretary of state have acted, and seek 
a new grant of power, they and the party which is responsible for them, 
must account for their use of power to the people from whom it came, 
and the people must pass judgment upon them, and then full and frank 
public discussion becomes the citizen’s duty.” 

—From an Address as temporary chairman of the N. Y. Republican 
Convention, Feb. 15, 1916. Air Root then arraigns the adminis¬ 
tration for its course in the Alexican and European Wars. 

THREATS 

“Extreme and belUgerent expression, unsupported by resolution, is 
weak and without effect. No man would draw a pistol who dares to shoot. 
The government that shakes its fist first, and its finger afterwards, falls 
into contempt.”— Same address as above. 

DEMOCRATS CONTROLLED WITH CLUB 

“The Democrats in Congress are never controlled, except with a club, 
and government with a club is always spasmodic and defective.” 

—Same address as above. 

INTERNATIONAL LAW 

“There can be no crime which leaves a man without legal rights. One 
is always entitled to insist that he shall not be punished, except in accord¬ 
ance with law, or without such a hearing as the universally accepted 
principles of justice demand. If that right be denied to the most des¬ 
perate criminal in a foreign country, his own government can and ought 
to protect him against the wrong.” 

— Upon ^The Relations between International Tribunals of Arbitra¬ 
tion and The Jurisdiction of International Courts,^ Washington, D. C., 
Apr. 23, 1909. 


592 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

“Our people here in the United States are probably more ready to 
assent to such a view as this (arbitration of controversies in an Inter¬ 
national Court) than the people of any other country in the world, 
because we have been long accustomed to the existence of a great tribunal, 
a part of whose duty it is to sit in judgment upon the question whether 
the governments of the soverign states and the government of our own 
nation, in their acts, conform to the great principles of justice dnd right 
conduct embodied in our Constitution. That arrangement of embodying 
the eternal principles of justice in a written instrument, investing a court 
with the power to declare all acts of Congresses, and legislatures, and 
Presidents, and Governors, void and of no effect, when they fail to conform 
to these principles, is, it seems to me, the greatest contribution of America 
to the political science of the world. * * * It is rather a new idea, 

and it will take time and argument and exposition to bring the world 
to the acceptance of that view.” 

—* The Importance of Judicial Settlement', Washington, D. C., Dec. 
10, 1910. 

THE INTANGIBLE AND SENTIMENTAL THINGS RULE THE 

WORLD 

“After all, what rules the world, the one thing that is eternal and all 
powerful, is the intangible and sentimental.”— From same address as above. 

WAR 

“War was forced upon mankind in his ori^nal civil and social condition. 
The laws of the survival of the fitting, led inevitably to the survival and 
predominance of the men who were effective in war, and who loved it 
because they were effective. War was the avenue to all that mankind 
desired. Food, wives, a place in the sun, freedom from restraint and 
oppression, wealth of comfort, wealth of luxury, respect, honor, power, 
control over others, were sought and attained by fighting. Nobody 
knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a 
place for theinselves, while the weak and peaceaWe have gone to the wall. 
Love of fighting was bred in the blood of the race, because those who 
did not love fighting were not suited to their environment.” 

—From Noble Prize Address, prepared by Mr. Root to deliver in 
person at Christiana, Norway, Sep. 8, 191 If,, but delivery of which was 
prevented by the outbreak of the European War. 

FRANCIS LIEBER 

“We cannot fail to set a high estimate upon the services of the man 
(Lieber) who gave form and direction and effectiveness to the civilizing 
movement by which man at his best, through the concurrence of nations, 
imposes the restraint of rules of right conduct, upon man at his worst, 
in the extreme exercise of force.” 

—From lecture on ^Francis Lieber, Washington, D. C., Apr. 2Ji, 1913. 

THE REAL MONROE DOCTRINE 

“The safety of the United States demands that American territory 
shall remain American. * * * The declaration of Monroe was that 

the rights and interests of the United States were involved in maintain¬ 
ing a condition, and the condition to be maintained was the independence 
of all the American countries.” 

—From Address, in Washington, D. C., Apr. 21i., 19H, upon 'The 
Real Monroe Doctrine.' 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


593 


THE JUDICIAL FACULTY 

“In an international court of arbitration, we need a court of permanent 
judges, who will have no other occupation, and no other interest but the 
exercise of the judicial faculty under the sanction of that high sense of 
responsibility which has made the courts of justice in the civilized nations 
of the world the exponents of all that is best and noblest in modern 
civilization.” 

—'The Hague Peace Conference,^ an Address in opening the National 
Arbitration and Peace Congress, in New York City, Apr. 5, 1907. 

CHARLES E. HUGHES 

Congratulating Chas. E. Hughes, after his defeat for the Presidency, 
at a Banquet, in N. Y. City, Jan. 23, 1917, Mr. Root, put it, this way: 

“I am glad Mr. Hughes is here, but I wish he were somewhere else.” 

THE RECALL OF JUDGES AND DECISIONS 

“Under the first of these proposals, if a specified proportion of the 
voters are dissatisfied with a judge’s decision, they are empowered to 
require that at the next election, or at a special election, called for that 
purpose, the judge shall be permitted to continue in office, or some other 
specified person shall be substituted in his place. This ordeal differs 
radically from the popular judgment which a judge is called upon to 
meet, at the end of his term of office, however short that may be, because 
when his term has expired he is judged upon his general course of conduct 
while he has been in office, and stands or falls upon that as a whole. 
Under a recall, a judge may be brought to the bar of public judgment 
immediately, upon the rendering of a particular decision, which excites 
public interest, and he will be subject to punishment if that decision 
is unpopular. Judges will naturally be afraid to render unpopular dicis- 
ions. They will hear and decide cases with a stronger incentive to avoid 
condemnation themselves than to do justice to the litigant or the accused. 
Instead of independent and courageous judges, we shall have timid and 
time-serving judges. That highest duty of the judicial power, to extend 
the protection of the law to the weak, the friendless, the unpopular, will 
in a great measime fail. Indirectly the effect will be to prevent the en¬ 
forcement of the essential limitations upon official power, because the 
judges will be afraid to declare that there is a violation when the violation 
is to accomplish some popular object. 

“The recall of decisions aims directly at the same result. Under such 
an arrangement, if the courts have found a particular law to be a viola¬ 
tion of one of the fundamental rules of limitation prescribed in the 
Constitution, and the public feeling at the time is in favor of disregarding 
that limitation, in that case an election is to be held, and if the people 
in the election vote that the law shall stand, it is to stand, although 
it be a violation of the Constitution; that is to say, if at any time, a 
majority of the voters of a State (and ultimately the same would be 
true of the people of the United States), choose not to be bound, in any 
particular case, by the rule of right conduct, which they have established 
for themselves, they are not to be bound. This is sometimes spoken of 
as a popular reversal of the decisions of the courts. That I take to be 
an incorrect view. The power which would be exercised by the people 
under such an arrangement would be, not judicial, but legislative. The 
action would not be a decision that the court was wrong in finding a 
law unconstitutional, but it would be maldng a law valid which was 
invalid before, because unconstitutional. In such an election the majority 
of the voters would make a law where no law had existed before; and they 
would make that law in violation of the rules of conduct by which the 


594 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


people themselves had solemnly declared ought to be bound. The 
exercise of such a power, if it is to exist, cannot be limited to the parti¬ 
cular cases which you or I or any man now living may have in mind. 
It must be general. If it can be exercised at all, it can and will be exercised 
by the majority, whenever they wish to exercise it. If it can be employed 
to make as to violate the Constitution, it can be employed to prohibit 
the worship of an unpopular religious sect, or to take away the property 
of an unpopular rich man, without compensation, or to prohibit freedom 
of speech and of the press in opposition to prevailing opinion, or to 
deprive one accused of crime, of a fair trial when he has been condemned 
already by the newspapers. In every case, the question whether the 
majority shall be bound by those general principles of action which the 
people have prescribed for themselves will be determined in that case 
by the will of the majority, and, therefore, in no case, will the majority 
be bound except by its own will at the time. 

“The exercise of such power would strike at the very foundation of our 
system of government. It would be a reversion of the system of the 
ancient republics where the state was everything, and the individual 
nothing, except as a part of the state, and where liberty perished. 

“It would be a repudiation of the fundamental principle of Anglo- 
Saxon liberty which we inherit and maintain, for it is the very soul of 
our political institutions that they protect the individual against the 
majority. ‘All men,’ says the Declaration, ‘are endowed by their Creator 
with certain unalienable rights.’ Governments are instituted to secure 
these rights. The rights are not derived from any majority. They are 
not disposable by any majority. They are superior to all majorities. 
The weakest minority, the most despised sect, exist by their own right. 
The most friendless and lonely human being on American soil holds his 
right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all that goes 
to make them up, by title indefeasible against the world, and it is the 
glory of American self-government that by the limitations of the Constitu¬ 
tion we have protected that right against even ourselves.” 

—^Essentials of the Constitution^ at Princeton University, Apr. 16, 
1913. 

TRUTHS MUST BE PROVED—ALWAYS 

“A very wise man has said that ‘short of the multiplication table there 
is no truth and no fact which must not be proved over again as if it had 
never been proved, from time to time.’ ” 

—From ^.Experiments in Government,’ at Princeton University, Apr. 
15, 1913. 

THE UNITED STATES SENATE 

“The Senate exercises a power more varied than any other dehberative 
body in the world; shares in the legislative and judicial functions; with 
control over the laws providing for the raising and the expenditure of 
revenue, through its constitutional power of amendment; with control 
over the appointments to offices by the necessity of its consent to the 
ratification of treaties; with the function, that highest of all judicial 
functions, constituting it the court for the trial of impeachments, after 
a century and a quarter of life, I declare to you and to my countrymen 
that the Senate of the United States has performed its duty loyally, 
faithfully and competently, and has furnished to the history of the country 
a line of illustrious names and a record of great achievements which 
provides one of the most convincing proofs the world has yet had that 
popular government through representative institutions is a possibility 
among men.” 

—^Direct Election of Senators,’ in U. S. Senate, Feb. 10, 1911. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


595 


PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION—EDUCATIONAL 

“The greatest, most useful educational process ever known to the 
world occurs every four years, in the United States, when during a 
presidential election, some 15,000,000 voters are engaged for months in 
reading and hearing about great and difficult questions of government, 
in studying them, in considering, and discussing, and forming matured 
opinions about them. We some tines hear complaints that elections 
interfere with business and come too frequently. On the contrary, 
nothing else is so valuable and important for business, because it is this 
educational process that is laying the solid foundation of sound judg¬ 
ment, sober self-restraint, and familiarity with political questions among 
the governing mass, upon which the security of all business depends. 
* * * expenditure, during the campaign of 1912, amounted to 

only about three and a half cents per capita for the people of the United 
States, on one side, and the great bulk of that is applied to the political 
education of voters.” 

—^ The Citizens’ Partin Government,’ delivered before Yale Univer¬ 
sity, May, 1907. 

SOCIALISM 

“Sociahsts put hmitations upon the right of private property, and 
limitations upon individual opportunity, and their theories are still more 
widely enforced among all that part of the wage-workers who believe in 
putting a limit upon the amount of work which each workman shall be 
permitted to do in his day’s labor, so that the most industrious, skillful, 
and ambitious workman shall be permitted to do no more and to earn 
no more than the most dull, idle and indifferent workman. A common 
benefit of property and a common standard of exertion are liable to be 
substituted for all inequalities of fortune and achievement. After many 
centuries of struggle for the right of equality there is some reason to 
think that mankind is now entering upon a struggle for the right of ine- 
quahty. It remains to be seen how democracy will work under these 
new conditions.” 

—^ The Citizens’ Partin Government,’ Yale Lectures, May, 1907. 

CONDITIONS OF A LAWYER’S SUCCESS 

“They are severe. He must acquire sound learning; he must be trained 
to clear thinking and to simple and direct expression; he must be both 
intellectually and morally honest; and he must have the quality of loyalty 
to every cause in which he enlists. He should have the tact which comes 
from real sympathy with his fellowmen, and he will be far better for the 
saving grace of a sense of humor wliich brings with it a sense of propor¬ 
tion and of good judgment. 

“The lawyer who exercises these qualities is certain of professional 
emoluments greater than those received by the members of any other 
profession, old or new. But he is certain of far more than this. As he 
goes on in life a multitude of personal relations grow up between him and 
his clients. Some of these clients are strong and able, and with them the 
relation is mutual respect and helpfulness. Others are weak and depen¬ 
dent, and to them he furnishes not merely learning, but support and 
strength of character and moral fiber. The feeling of all is characterized 
by confidence and trust. The growth of his own character responds 
to the requirements of this esteem. In time other people come to^ feel 
and to adopt, to a great degree, the opinion and attitude of the clients 
who knew him best. And so he rounds out his career in possession of 
that priceless solace of age, the respect and affection of the community 
which makes up this world.” 

—^Duties of American Lawyers,’ an Address before the Yale Law 
School, New Haven, Conn., June 27, 190J^. 


596 


CHEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


RESPONSIBILITY OF AMERICAN BAR 

“How are we to meet the future, and what is the responsibility of the 
bar, that is the guardian of American law, toward meeting that future? 
It is not a matter of opportunism; it is not a matter of temporary exped¬ 
iency. The situation cannot be dealt with by merely doing what seems 
to you and to me to be the expedient thing in this situation and in that 
situation today or tomorrow. Our people must base themselves upon 
a foundation of principle. They must renew their loyalty to ideals. 
And the basic principle is the principle of American law. 

“It is the principle of individual liberty which has grown out of the 
life of the Anglo-Saxon race and has been waxing strong during all the 
seven hundred years since Magna Charta. That was the formative 
principle that made America, the United States, and Canada, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf to the frozen north, English-speak¬ 
ing, pursuing the course of the common law, preserving liberty and doing 
justice. That the power of that principle of individual liberty that 
developed in the life of our race is the greatest formative power in the 
history of the world. Over against it stands the principle of the State. 
Upon the one hand is the declaration in that great instrument, the value 
of which we hardly yet appreciate, the immortal Declaration, penned by 
Thomas Jefferson, that all men are created with unalienable rights, 
which governments are created to preserve. On the other hand is the 
principle that States are created with supreme rights, which all individuals 
are bound to observe. The one centers the system of law and order and 
justice upon the inalienable right of the individual; the other centers 
the system of law and order and justice upon the rights of the State, 
which subordinates the rights of the individual, and that is the funda¬ 
mental question which is being fought out upon the battle-fields of 
Europe. 

“Here in this country we have enjoyed liberty and order so long that 
we have forgotten how they came. Our people assume that they come as 
the air comes, to be breathed; they have assumed that they will, of their 
nature and by their own force, continue forever, without effort. Ah, no! 
Liberty has always been born of struggle, it has not come, save through 
sacrifice and blood of martyrs and the devotion of mankind. And it is 
not to be preserved except by jealous watchfulness and stern determina¬ 
tion always to be free.” 

—^Responsibility of the Barf at Annual Dinner of N. Y. Bar Assn., 

Jan. 15, 1916. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 

“What can the bar do to improve the administration of justice in the 
United States? First, we can improve our law-making. We make too 
many laws. According to a count made in the Library of Congress, 
our national and state legislatures passed 62,014 statutes during the five 
years from 19.09 to 1913 inclusive. During the same five years 65,379 
decisions of the national and State courts of last resort were reported in 
630 volumes. Of these statutes 2,013 were passed by the National Con¬ 
gress, and of these decisions 1,061 were rendered by the Supreme Court 
of the United States. Many of these statutes were drawn clumsily, 
carelessly, ignorantly. Their terms are so vague, uncertain, doubtful, 
that they breed litigation inevitably. * * * rpj^g ^ould be somewhat 

regulated by a competent reference library for the use of the legislative 
body, with a competent library force to furnish statistics, historical 
data, and information pertinent to proposed measures. Another is the 
establishment of a drafting bureau, or the employment of expert counsel, 
subject to be called upon by the legislative body and its committees, 
to put in proper form measures which are desired, so that they will be 
drawn with reference to previous legislation, and existing decisions of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


597 


the courts; so that they will not duplicate existing statutes, will not be 
inconsistent with existing statutes, will not ignore the decisions of the 
courts, will not undertake to do anything in one way which is already 
done in another, and will be written in good English, brief, simple, clear, 
and free from ambiguity and inconsistency. There is a useless lawsuit 
in every useless word of a statute, and every loose, sloppy phrase plays 
the part of the typhoid carrier.” 

—^The Layman's Criticism of the Lawyer,' before American Bar 

Assn., Washington, D. C., Oct. 20, 1914- 

MAGNA CHARTA 

“The ideas embodied in our constitutions, constitutions which are but 
the expression of the conception of individual liberty that has grown 
through a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, proved vital to pro¬ 
tect the individual against the tyranny of government. The ideas that 
were forced upon King John, when he signed the Magna Charta, that 
great and conquering conception of liberty which has been the formative 
power moulding the social and political life of the hundred and ten 
million people who inhabit this continent north of the Rio Grande, 
prevailed and became effective as applied to the daily life, the, protection, 
the prosperity and happiness of the little brown brothers in the Philip¬ 
pines; of the men whom we fought the war of 1898, to liberate in Cuba 
and our wards in Porto Rico. Surely no lawyer was ever more fortunate 
than in the opportunity to help in the demonstration of the eternal 
verity of the principles of justice and liberty which underlie all the efforts 
and struggles of our American war.” 

—‘‘The Lawyer of Today,' New York City, Mar. 13, 1915. 

AGAINST THE RECALL OF JUDGES 

“If you undertake to say to a judge that if he decides against the 
popular will that finds itself restrained by the declaration of one of these 
principles of conduct under the Constitution, he shall be recalled, you 
make a coward of him. One of these principles is that our natures are 
weak, prone to error, subject to fall into temptation and be led away 
by impulse, and the other, on the great fundamental principle that there 
is only one way in which a man can control his own tendencies to error, 
and that is by the recognition, the adoption and enforcement upon him¬ 
self of declared principles of right conduct. 

“It is not in human nature that judges shall hold the scales evenly 
when they themselves will be the sacrifices. It will introduce the rule 
of cowardice in place of the rule of courage; the rule of time-serving in 
place of the rule of fearless justice; the rule of force of the great body 
of the people instead of the rule which protects the weak individual against 
all the people. And so, with the proposal that the people shaU pass by 
vote upon the decisions of the judges as to constitutional'questions; that 
means that wherever a constitutional Utigation has been established to 
prevent the people from doing injustice, when it comes to the point of 
action, they themselves shall determine whether they will be restrained 
by it or not in the particular case where the injustice naay be done. 
These rules must be kept impersonal, abstract, universal, in order that 
they may restrain and guide action in each particular case. 

“It is so that just men rule their conduct. They do not make up their 
principles as they go along, according to the wish to do this or that 
or the other thing. They determine their principles and they direct 
their conduct and restrain their wishes by making them conform to the 
principles they have adopted beforehand. 

“These fundamental bases of our government do together assert and 
set up as the great pivotal principle of national conduct the proposition 


598 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


that there is such a thing as justice that is above majorities and is inde¬ 
pendent of popular will. All the voters in America cannot make injustice, 
justice. It is impossible that any two beings should be created anywhere 
in this, universe, and come into life without being subject to the eternal 
law that requires just conduct by them toward each other. Abraham 
Lincoln, in the first inaugural, described the true character of our govern¬ 
ment. He said: ‘A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks 
and limitations and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of 
popular opinion and sentiment, is the only true sovereign of a free people. 
Whoever rejects it does of necessity fiy to anarchy or despotism’.” 

—Remarks in the 'State Republican Convention, of New York, at 
Rochester, Apr. 10, 1912, on ^ The Recall of Judges.' 

THE UNITED STATES—HIS CLIENT 

“The success Ehhu Root achieved twenty years ago as a lawyer in 
handling difficult problems of big business is remembered. At the age 
when most men of the first cahber have either made or unmade a public 
career through previous service in politics he obtained the government of 
the United States, as it were, for his client. 

“Then great constructive accomplishments began to appear. He 
reorganized the United States army; created the general staff; devised 
and drafted the Platt amendment for Cuba; wrote every word of the 
organic law of the Phihppines; inaugurated a foreign policy toward 
Latin America, a thing which had not existed since the days of Blaine. 

“Mr. Roosevelt’s appraisement of these things, which in the heat of 
a partisan campaign he did not amend, was: ‘The greatest man that has 
arisen on either side of the Atlantic in my lifetime.’ 

“When Mr. Root came over to London a year ago last July from the 
Hague, I spent part of an afternoon with him. It was in his suite at 
Claridge’s; Henry White was there. Mr. Root was fresh from the Hague, 
where he had been sitting for a month in conference. He remarked how 
hard it was in international conference to get the papers out where one 
can work at them. 

“ ‘The difficulty is not with principles,’ he said, ‘but with understanding 
each other through the barriers to communication which different ways 
of thinking and feeling present. It is another country, another language, 
another literature, another custom, and sometimes a great many that 
you have to deal with. One learns quickly there that respect for the 
feelings and prejudices of others is the condition for having one’s own 
feehngs and prejudices respected. That is the problem of diplomacy.’ 

“We had known in London of Mr. Root’s conference with Lord PhiUi- 
more when he first arrived in England on his way to the Hague. Mr. 
Root believes in having a plan, not a too comprehensive plan, but a 
working plan. *He points to one cause of the failure at Paris as the lack 
of a plan. When we walked down the gangplank at Plymouth he carried 
in his pocket a scheme for the permanent court of justice. He conferred 
with Lord PhilHmore. The merit of the Root plan which was adopted 
was its avoidances of the pitfall of the Hague tribunal for arbitration in 
the manner of selecting judges. The testimony of its merit is the now 
complete panel of judges for the international court of justice selected 
by the assembly of the League of Nations. 

“Mr. Root enjoys a position in England not unhke that of Bryce in 
America. He declined the proffered headship of the international court 
of justice. He is spoken of throughout Europe in the equivalent of the 
phrase of Roosevelt: ‘The greatest man on either side of the Atlantic.’ 
Lord Bryce said to me: ‘Your greatest Secretary of State since Webster, 
the greatest brain you have.’ ”— Andrew Ten Eyck, in the Outlook. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


599 


PRESENTATION SPEECH 

Mr. Root, in making the presentation of the statue on behalf of the 
American people, delivered a finely phrased oration. In the course of 
it he said: 

“Put aside superificial differences, accidental and unimportant, and 
Abraham Lincoln appears in the simple greatness of his life, liis character 
and his service to mankind, a representative of the deep and underlying 
qualities of his race—the qualities that great emergencies reveal unchang¬ 
ingly the same in every continent, the qualities to which the British owed 
her life in the terrible years of the last decade, the qualities that have 
made both Britain and America great. He was imbued with conceptions 
of justice and liberty that the people of Britain had been worMng out in 
struggle and sacrifice since before the Magna Charta—the conceptions 
for which Chatham and Burke and Franklin and Washington stood 
together a century and a half ago, when the Battle for British liberty 
was fought and won for Britain as well as for America on the other side 
of the Atlantic. These conceptions of justice and liberty have been the 
formative power that has brought all America, from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, to order its life according to the course of the common law, to 
assert its popular sovereignty through representative government, 
Britain’s great gift to the pohtical science of the world, and to establish 
the relation of individual citizenship to the state on the basis of inalien¬ 
able rights which governments are established to secure. 

“It is the identity of these fundamental conceptions in both countries 
which makes it impossible that in any great world emergency Britain and 
America can be on opposing sides. These conceptions are the breath of 
life for both. While they prevail both natiojis will endure; if they perish, 
both nations will die. These were Lincoln’s inheritance, and when he 
declared that African slavery was eternally wrong and gave his life to 
end it, he was responding to impulses born in him from a long line of 
humble folk, as well in England as in America, who were themselves a 
product of the age-long struggle for the development of Anglo-Saxon 
freedom.” 

— Root, in Presentation Speech of Lincoln's Statue in Bronze, in England. 
LANCASHIRE’S SUPPORT 

“The true heart of Britain understood him while he lived. We remember 
the Lancashire workmen brought into proverty and suffering through 
lack of cotton. When the Emancipation Proclamation had dispelled all 
doubt as to the real nature of the struggle in America 6,000 of them met 
in a great hall in Manchester and sent to President Lincoln a message of 
sympathy and support. This was his answer: 

“ ‘Under these circumstances I cannot but regard your decisive utter¬ 
ances upon the question as an instance of sublime Chlrstian heroism 
which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is an 
energetic and reinspiring assimance of the inherent power of truth and 
the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. 

“ ‘I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sus¬ 
tained by your great nation, and, on the other hand, I have no hesi¬ 
tation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the 
reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this most 
interchange of sentiment therefore, as an augury that whatever else may 
happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the 
peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, 
as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.’ 

“We may disregard all the little prejudices and quarrels that result 
from casual friction and pinpricks and from outside misrepresentations 
and detractions, and rest upon Lincoln’s unerring judgment of his country- 


600 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


men and his race. We may be assured from that whenever trials come, 
whenever there is need for assurance of the inherent power of truth 
and the triumph of justice, humanity and freedom, then peace and friend¬ 
ship between Britain and America will prove to be, as Lincoln desired 
to make them, perpetual. 

“Because under the direct tests of national character, in the stress of 
supreme effort and sacrifice, in the valley of the shadow of death, the souls 
of both Britain and America prove themselves kin to the soul of Abraham 
Lincoln, friendship between us is safe, and the statue of Lincoln, the 
American, stands as of right before the old Abbey, where sleep the great 
of Britain’s history.”— Idem. 

THE PRIME MINISTER 

The Prime Minister, in responding on behalf of the British people, said; 

“In a few moments we shall see unveiled before our eyes a present¬ 
ment in bronze of the best-known historical face in the Anglo-Saxon 
world, in fact one of the few best-known faces in the whole world. On 
behalf of the people of this country, and I think I may say on behalf 
of the people of the British Empire, I accept with gratitude This fine 
statue by a brilliant American sculpture of a great leader of men. 

“I doubt whether any statesman who ever lived sank so deeply into 
the hearts of the people of many lands as Abraham Lincoln did. I am 
not sure that you in America realize the extent to which he is also our 
possession and our pride. He was in many respects the most remarkable 
man of the day. If you look at his portraits they always give you an 
indelible impression of his great height, as does his life, height of purpose 
height of idealism, height of .character, height of intelligence. 

“Amoftg many notable men who filled the state at that day he was the 
tallest of them all. His figure stands out now, towering amongst the 
tallest contemporaries. In many respects he was taller even than the 
great event in which he took a direct part. 

“The preservation of the American Union, the emancipation of the 
slaves, are notable events in the world’s history. But reading the story, 
I feel that the personality of Abraham Lincoln and his statesmanship 
are in some respects even greater than those colossal events. His courage, 
fortitude, patience, humanity, clemency, his trust in the people, his belief 
in democracy, and may I add, some of the phrases in which he gave 
expression to those attributes will stand forever as beacons to guide 
troubled nations and their perplexed leaders.”— By Lord Lloyd George. 

WAR AND VICTORY 

“Resolute in war, he was moderate in victory. Misrepresented, mis¬ 
understood, underestimated, he was patient to the last. I know why his 
face appeared to become sadder as the years of the war rolled past. 
There were those who thought he ought to have displayed his appreciation 
of victory by using it hard-heartedly. 

“He disdained both these counsels, and he was often reviled by both 
counsellors. His tenderness was counted as weakness of character, his 
implicity as proof of shallowness of mind, but the people believed in him 
all the time, they believed in him to the end, and they still believed in 
him. In his life he was a great American. He is American no longer. 
He is one of those giant figures, of whom there are very few in history, 
who lose their nationality in death. (Applause.) 

“They are no longer Greek, or Hebrew, or English, or American, they 
belong to mankind. These eminent men whose statues are in that square 
are great Englishmen. I wonder whether I will be forgiven for saying 
that George Washington was a great American, but Abraham Lincoln 
belongs to the common people of every land. He is of their race, of 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


601 


their kind, of their blood, of their nation, the race of the great common 
people. They love that haggard face with the sad and tender eyes. 
There is a worship in their regard. There is a faith and a hope in that 
worship. (Hear, Hear.) 

‘ ‘May I respectfully, earnestly, say one word from this platform to the 
great people of America? This torn and bleeding earth is calhng today 
for the help of the America of Abraham Lincoln.” (Cheers.) 

— Viscount James Bryce. 

LINCOLN’S BRITISH ANCESTRY 

Lord Bryce, after speaking of Lincoln’s British ancestry, went on: 

“Thus, thinking of him as belonging to both branches of the old stock, 
we wish to commemorate him here among the great ones of Britain. 
No spot in Britain is so fit. In and around Parhament Square stand the 
sculptured figures of many of the most illustrious Enghshmen; some under 
the open vault of heaven; some in the venerable Abby, rich with solemn 
and pathetic memories; some in the halls of Parhament itself, illustrious 
figures from the days of Hampden and Cromwell down to those of Canning 
and Peel, Disraeli and Gladstone. 

“Placing the statue of Lincoln here in such company we honor him for 
what he did and for the meaning his hfe has had for his own country, 
for our common Enghsh stock and for the world. He brought his nation 
through the greatest perils it ever encountered, leaving a record of patient 
wisdom and a stainless life. To us he stands as a model of that upright¬ 
ness and loyalty and truth, that steadfastness and courage which men of 
British stock have so often displayed in war and peace. 

“He is ours, Mr. Root, almost as much as he is yours, a pledge of 
brotherhood and friendship, and we commemorate also as a hero who 
belongs to the whole world, because he showed what fame may be won 
and what service he rendered by a plain son of the people unaided by any 
gifts of fortune. 

“His hfe and his character rise hke a beacon light of hope to us all in 
these dark days of strife and confusion. Here in the midst of our great 
Englishmen let this great American stand majestic in his simplicity, a 
witness to what one indomitable will bent on high aims, always hopeful 
because inspired by faith in freedom and in the people whence he sprang, 
could achieve for all mankind.— James Bryce. 


SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, lord killowen (1833-1900) 

AS A CROSS-EXAMINER 

It has been said that Russell’s success in cross-examination, like his 
success in everything else, was due to his force of character. His very 
appearance must have been a shock to the witness, the manly defiant 
bearing, the noble brow, the haughty look, the remorseless mouth, 
those deep-set eyes, widely opened, and that searching glance, which 
pierced the very soul. “Russell,” said a member of the Northern Circuit, 
“produced the same effect on a witness that a cobra produces on a rabbit.” 
In a certain case he appeared on the wrong side. Thirty-two witnesses 
were called, thirty-one on the wrong side, and one on the right side. 
Not one of the thirty-one was broken down in cross-examination; but 
the one on the right side was utterly annihilated. 

LORD COLERIDGE’S TESTIMONY 

“To what do you attribute Russell’s great success?” a friend asked of 
Coleridge; “he does not seem to me to possess more remarkable qualities 
than other eminent men, to be a better speaker, to have more intellectual 
power; how does he do it?” “He imposes himself upon the jury and the 
Court,” was his answer; and his Lordship added, “He is the biggest 
advocate of the century.” “Ordinarily,” says an observer, “the judge 
dominates the jury, the counsel, the public, he is the central figure of the 
piece. But when Russell is there, the judge isn’t in it, Russell dominates 
everyone.” 

MADE HOMELY CLIENT LEAVE COURT-ROOM 

One day in Court, the lay client, in a case turned round and made 
some suggestions to Russell. “Who is that unpleasant looking man who 
spoke to me,” said Russell, with a frown to the solicitor, who happened 
to be sitting beside the client. “That’s your client,” said the solicitor. 
“Then, I must trouble you,” said Russell, “to ask him to go to some part 
of the court-room where I cannot see him.” The solicitor conveyed this 
request in diplomatic language to the chent. The client, however, did 
not quite see why he should change*his place, and said no. “Tell him,” 
said Russell, addressing the solicitor, “that if he does not go, at once, 
where I cannot see him, I won’t go on with the ease.” The client im¬ 
mediately disappeared. 

SOME OTHER ECCENTRICITIES 

A pompous “expert,” who had been in the habit of laying down the law 
before Parliamentary Committees, once attended a consultation at 
Russell’s chambers. “Gentlemen,” said he, while Russell was engaged in 
conversation with the other counsel, “if you will allow me, I shall give 
you my view of this case.” “Hold your tongue,” said Russell, “till you 
are asked for your view!” He did not like anyone to put a hat on his 
table, or to touch him. One day a self-important solicitor came in. 
“How do you do, Mr. Russell, how do you do?” he said, walking for¬ 
ward and putting his hat on the table. “Take your hat off the table,” 
was Russell’s sole reply. The solicitor was offended, and took a back 
seat, when the consultation began. During the consultation the solicitor 
got excited, and jumping up, touched Russell, saying, “I think you are 
mistaken, Mr. Russell.” Said Russell, “Take your hand away.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


603 


BLUNT—TOLD A MAN HE WAS A FOOL 

A man who had a grievance, the result, in no small degree, of his own 
folly, plagued Russell with his story, as they walked together from 
Charing Cross to Oxford Circus. “Now, Russell,” said the man, when they 
got to the Circus, “I have told you my whole story, and I would like to 
know what you think.” “I think you are a great fool,” said Russell, as 
he turned off to Harley Street,— James of Herford's Life of Russell, 92-3. 

HIS BROGUE 

“Russell,” a friend said to him, “if you could only give up your Irish 
brogue, it would be worth to you at least 500 pounds ($2,500) a year.” 
“I would not give it up,” said Russell, for an additional 500 pounds.” 

— Idem, 89. 

THE PARNELL CASE 

The Parnell case was Russell’s great case. He closed in an eight- 
day argument before the Commission. There were examined before the 
Commission 340 witnesses. Russell made Ireland his client, and England 
its oppressor, and treated the Times, the real party in interest, a synonym 
for English oppression. In this case Russell completely broke down the 
forger Pigot, drove him to Madrid, Spain, where he suicided, rather 
than return to England. Of Russell’s great speech. Sir James Hannen, 
one of the judges of the Commission, wrote, “A great speech, worthy of 
a great occasion;” Lord Rosebury, “You have at a bound passed from 
solid reputation to supreme eminence;” and Cardinal Manning, “You 
lifted the subject to the level of a great national and historical cause.” 
Russell’s fee in this case was $16,500. “It was the greatest speech, since 
Burke’s day,” said George S. Boutwell, of Boston, Mass., in 1902, to the 
compiler of this work. 

NOT A STUDENT 

Russell was not a great student in general literature. He was too 
much a man of action to be a man of books. But wherever he went 
he carried two books in his hand-bag, “Locke on the Human Under¬ 
standing,” and “The Imitation of Christ.” He loved novels of excitement; 
“Monte Christo,” was a favorite. He read Gaborian’s books, dipped into 
Tolstoi, and Tourgeneff, and once when he was ill at Leeds, he got his 
chief clerk, Mr. Block, to read the “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” to 
him.— The Author. 

CHESS, CARDS, AND HORSE-RACING 

He played chess, was fond of music and pictures, and dehghted to steer 
a boat in a gale of wind. Horse-racing and boxing were his delight. 

— Author. 

THREW TRAVELER’S BOOTS FROM CAR 

He was once traveling from Newmarket to London, a powerful looking 
man, clearly a betting man, got into the same carriage. As the train moved 
away from the station, the man opened a bag, and took out a pair of 
slippers. He then proceeded to take off his boots. “What are you going 
to do?” said Russell. “To take off my boots,” said the man, “and to 
put on these slippers.” “I object strongly to your doing anything of 
the kind,” said Russell; “its a most offensive proceeding.” “I suppose 
I can do what I like with my own boots ?” said the man. “Not in a public 
conveyance,” replied Russell. “Well, I am going to take off my boots,” 


G04 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


said the man, ^‘and to put on these slippers. “And if you take them off,” 
said Russell, “I’ll fling them through the window.” The man laughed 
and took off his boots; but they were through the window before he ha^d 
time to get into his slippers. He was furious, but he had to grin and bear 
it, telling RusseU he would “take the law on him.” After an hour’s run 
the train stopped, the man got out to have refreshments, and when 
Russell saw him walking on the platform in his slippers he was suddenly 
stricken with compassion. “Sir,” said the man, “you cannot do more than 
apologize. We shall forget the incident;” and then they chatted away, 
as if nothing “untoward” had happened until the train reached London. 

— Russell's Life, 3S8-9. 

KEPT SIX LAWYERS BUSY BRIEFING CASES 

One day, on circuit, a barrister went into the library and saw a man 
working up some cases. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Working 
up cases for Russell,” was the answer. He went round the library, and 
found that there were not less than six men “working up cases for Russell.” 
“Why,” said he, “the whole library seems to be working for Russell,” 
“Yes,” said the sixth man, “there are six of us doing the work of one man, 
in order that one man may do the work of six.”— Russell's Life, 91. 

ACCURATE 

It was an intellectual treat to work with Russell. To have one’s mind 
drawn through his was bracing and healthful. “To work with you,” 
I once said to him, “is as good (or as bad) as to go through a course 
of Austin’s Jurisprudence.” “I like to be exact,” was the rejoinder. 
“So-and-so,” he would say, “was always in the air.” Inaccuracy and 
being “in the air” were the things which Russell hated most. The things 
he loved best were accuracy, lucidity, brevity, and keeping to the 
point. So long as you kept these four things in mind, you might agree 
or disagree with him, you might be conciliatory or aggressive, but he 
listened to you with attention, and treated your arguments and views 
with respect. He was only intolerant of stupidity, folly, verbosity, and 
affectation. Upon one occasion he asked a pretentious coxcomb, 
“Have you ever read ‘The Newcomes’?” “Yes,” drawled the coxcomb. 
“Well,” said Russell, “you are like Barnes Newcome.”— Life of Russell, 92. 

COMPARED WITH HIS RIVALS 

“Either as a junior or a contemporary, I have been associated with 
Cockburn, Thesiger, Kelly, Melish, Coleridge, Karslake, Giffard (Lord 
Halsbury), HawlSns, Holker, and of course many others. I cannot say 
that Russell was the equal to all these in every particular quality. Cock- 
burn’s eloquence has been unrivaled by any advocate of our time; Kelly 
was a most subtle reasoner; Melish was a most consummate lawyer; 
and Lord Brampton (Hawkins) possessed the highest powers of acute cross- 
examination. But I doubt if any of these men possessed such a combi¬ 
nation of the principal qualities which avail an advocate as was given 
to Charles RusseU, for in respect to none was he deficient.” 

—James of Hereford, in O' Brien's Life of Russell, 272. 

STANDING AS A LAWYER 

Russell became 'par excellence the leader of the Circuit. Next to Holker, 
Russell himself regarded Herschell and Pope as the ablest men on Circuit. 
Russell once said to me: “My . chief contemporaries on the Circuit 
were Pope, Herschell, and Holker. Holker was a formidable opponent, 
so was Herschell; Pope was a very able man, but not a lawyer in the same 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


605 


sense as Herschell and myself. I do not think Pope was suited for nisi 
prius business. He was better suited to Parliamentary business. He 
was certainly suited for politics, he would have been a greater success 
in the House of Commons than either Herschell or myself; had Herschell 
and I been different men, the work in the Northern Circuit would not 
have gone so smoothly or so quickly as it did. We were both quick; 
we lose no time in coming to the point, and we keep to it. We understood 
and trusted each other.”— Author. 

TWO GREAT CASES OF RUSSELL’S 

He seems to have thought his greatest triumphs were Wilberforce 
V. Philip, and Chamberlayne v. Barnwall.— O' Brien's Life of Russell, 372. 

HIS AMBITION 

Sir Charles had an ambition, he wanted to sit on the woolsack; to 
have the mace and purse carried before him; to be the keeper of the 
Queen’s conscience; to be the head of the legal profession, and to be the 
first Roman Catholic lord chancellor of England and Ireland since the 
days of the Stuarts. This would be immortality in history. Lord Rose- 
bury was willing; but there was difficulty. Lord Herschell was already 
on the woolsack and intended to stay there. There was no precedent 
for two lord chancellors. Would Sir Charles wait till after the next 
general election and take his chance? The Lord chief justiceship was 
vacant. Sir Charles looked toward the woolsack and sighed, and then 
he sat down in the vacant chair. History may tell more, but that is how 
Sir Charles Russell became Lord Chief Justice of England, with a seat 
in the House of Lords, as Baron Russell of Killowen.— Author. 

HIS NATIVE WIT 

In his early days, he had a good deal to contend with from older men and 
judges, who thought to prune him down and squelch his exuberance, 
and he might have been snuffed out as many men have been but for the 
splendid combative element with which he was endowed. If he could 
help it, he would not be sat on, and was often very irritable when interrupt¬ 
ed. His native wit made him formidable. One day Sir Digby Seymour, 
Q. C., kept up a fiow of small talk when Russell was speaking. 

“I wish you would be quiet, Saymore,” said Russell, with his Irish 
accent. 

“My name is Seymour, if you please,” replied the learned gentleman, 
with mock dignity. 

“Then I wish you would ‘see more’ and say less,” was the rejoinder. 

— Author. 

VERY DEMOCRATIC 

During the Parnell Commission, when he was examing hostile witnesses 
whom the inapt British attorney-general, Sir Richard Webster, had 
fiustered and puzzled and worried out of their wits, he would rise, adjust 
his pince-nez, eye the witness carefully over the pinch of snuff he was 
taking, flick his dark handkerchief toward the box, and say suddenly, 
“Now thin, Mickey, what is this all about?” 

There was always the delicate suggestion of brogue in his talk with 
these witnesses; just a sufficient aroma of it to inspire confidence in them, 
restore what seemed to them their self-possession and lure them softly 
into a veritable bog of admissions and revelations. But this simulated 
brogue was not related at all to the rancous, squawking, harsh disfigurement 
of English which Lord Russell heard as a boy in his native County 
Down. It was the mellow, gentle intonation of the West and South, 


606 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


because he was dealing with Western and Southern peasants. It was the 
intuition of a great actor which put it on his tongue. But he would not 
have been the great actor that he was, if he had not been an Irishman. 

AN AUTOCRAT ON THE BENCH 

On the bench he was an autocrat of a highly individual type, at once 
robust and vigilant. There are growing up legends of volcanic master¬ 
fulness around his chieftainship. It was noted, for instance, that in the 
Jameson trial. Lord Russell’s two colleagues watched and obeyed him 
like terrified performing dogs. One of them was Sir Henry Hawkins, 
for years a veritable bogy man among “hanging judges,’’ and fondly 
believed to be the most effective judicial bully of his generation; but 
here he showed a wholly lamblike spirit under the grim eye of this redoubt¬ 
able new “chief.” But off the bench and in every non-professional capacity 
Lord Russell was quite the reverse of self-assertive. He spoke, both in 
set discourse and in the lighter after-dinner extempore, so that aU were 
glad to hear him; but he was the last to multiply opportunities for the 
sound of his voice, and he listened to others without producing the im¬ 
pression of resentment that he himself was being prevented from talking. 

— Author. 

MAN OF THE WORLD 

In the nicer sense of the phrase, he was many-fold more “a man of the 
world” than was Coleridge. He liked to ride a horse, and, perhaps, even 
more to see a horse race. He was a profound student of whist, and was 
grounded in the rudiments of some other games. He delighted in good 
company, and in the absence of nonsense and canting formalities. Within 
the scope of his profession, in matters concerning the dignity of his trade, 
so to speak, he had the arbitrary and despotic temper of a master crafts¬ 
man. Good workmanship he reverenced and he was intolerant with those 
who did not. His contempt for hereditary distinctions was not skin 
deep; it ran through his veins. He insisted upon having his peerage 
limited to himself, for his own life, as a tangible protest against an 
institution that he honestly hated. In a thousand other ways he was a 
democrat of the simplest and truest kind, and in many of these ways 
no man of unmixed English blood could ever quite follow him.— Author. 

GAVE TOO FREELY OF HIS MONEY 

He was one of the most engaging and lovable personalities in England’s 
public life. His generosity to his friends, indeed, to anybody whom he 
became aware was in difficulties, swallowed $100,000 a year, while he 
was a practicing barrister, and involved him in debts that threatened 
to destroy his peace of mind and injure his professional future. “What 
you want to do,” said one of his friends, “is to syndicate yourself and 
let a managing director conduct your practice, and finance your money¬ 
making possibilities.” This was actually done. A committee of friends 
paid off his debts, received all his income—during the last year of his 
practice he made $112,000—gave him a large allowance and brought 
system into his accounts, until he was free from debts, and had substan¬ 
tial investments.— From a London, 'paper, at time of his death. 

LAND TENURE BILL 

“It is stated, and I believe with perfect truth, that when Mr. Glad¬ 
stone was preparing a Land Tenure Bill for Ireland, a draft of the first 
scheme was sent to Sir Charles Russell, with a request that he would 
furnish the Cabinet with suggestions for its improvement. Russell 
read the draft bill carefully through, and found it utterly weak and in- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


(307 


adequate for its purpose. He returned it with the brief observation 
that the only improvement he could suggest was to put the draft into 
the fire. The Bill took a stronger form, after this suggestion, and opened 
a new era in land legislation for Ireland.” 

—2 Justin McCarthy's Reminiscences, 203. 

WIDE KNOWLEDGE NECESSARY IN THE LAW 

“There is no such a thing as knowledge which is useless in the pro¬ 
fession of the law. A man may not be a better engineer because he is 
a good classic, or a more successful merchant because he is a good mathe¬ 
matician; but at the bar, the wider the field of knowledge the better. 
There is there no such thing as knowledge going to waste. Indeed, 
I undertake to say that it rarely or never happens that a barrister does 
not find useful to his hand information which he has stored up, even 
upon subjects wholly remote from a knowledge of the law itself.” 

—Russell on ^ The Bar as a Profession'—in Youth's Companion, 

Feb., 1896. 

“SAYING NOTHING WITH EASE AND GRACE” 

“The world is full of men who have nothing to say, and say it with 
ease and grace, and even with what sometimes passes for eloquence, 
but I have never known any man who had something to say, which was 
worth saying who, whatever his difficulties of utterance or natural 
poverty of language may have been, has not been able to say that some¬ 
thing forcibly and weU. After all, the desirable thing is to have some¬ 
thing to say.” 

—From ^ The Bar as a Profession," — Youth's Companion, Feb., 1896. 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

“Daniel Webster’s arguments were granite-hke, and he was, perhaps, 
the greatest figure the world has seen."—Idem. 

REQUISITES TO SUCCESS AT THE BAR 

“Love of the profession for its own sake, physical health to endure 
its trials, clear-headed common sense and ability to wait, are the main 
considerations to be taken into consideration in determining the choice 
of the bar as a profession. If the youthful aspirant possesses these, suc¬ 
cess is, humanely speaking, certain. In fact, I concentrated my at¬ 
tention on the Bar; I did not allow myself to be distracted. It is the 
only way you can succeed at the Bar; or at anything.” 

DESPONDENCY—GULLY, HERSCHELL AND RUSSELL 

“I will give you a curious instance of the feehng of despair which some¬ 
times comes over men, and able men, too,” said Russell. “During my 
first years at the Bar, Gully, Herschell and I dined together on Circuit 
one night. Gully and Herschell were in a very despondent mood. They 
almost despaired of success in England. Gully—I think it was Gully— 
proposed going to the Straits Settlement and Herschell to the Indian 
Bar. It is curious to think of that night now, and to remember what 
those men ultimately became—Herschell, Lord Chancellor, and Gully, 
Speaker of the House of Commons. Besides the Bar, I made some money 
at the Press.” And we might add Russell’s practice got above $100,- 
000 a year, and then he became Lord Chief Justice of England. 

— Life of Rus.sell, 76. 


608 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


PUBLIC OPINION 

“Public opinion is a force wliich makes itself felt in every corner of the 
world, and is most powerful in the communities most civilized.” 

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 

(Speaking of Civilization Chief Justice Russell, in his address before 
the American Bar Association, in 1897, said): 

“Its true signs are thought for the poor and suffering; chivalrous 
regard and respect for woman; frank recognition of human brother¬ 
hood—irrespective of race, or color, or nation or religion; the narrowing 
of the domain of mere force as a governing factor in the world; the love 
of ordered freedom; abhorrence of what is mean and cruel and vile; 
ceaseless devotion to the claims of justice. Civilization in that, its 
true, its highest sense, must make for peace. We have solid grounds 
for faith in the future. Government is becoming, more and more, but 
in no narrow class sense, government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people. Populations are no longer moved and maneuvered at 
the arbitrary will or restless ambition or caprice of kings or potentates 
may dictate. And, although, democracy is subject to violent gusts of 
passion and prejudice, they are gusts only. The abiding sentiment of 
the*masses is for peace—for peace to hve industrious lives, and to be 
at rest with all mankind. With the prophet of old, they feel—though 
the feeling may find no articulate utterance—‘how beautiful upon the 
mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that pub- 
lisheth peace’.” 

HERSCHELL—A FORMIDABLE ANTAGONIST 

Russell was asked, in 1885, whom he. regarded as his most formidable 
antagonist at the Bar, and he answered, “Herschell.”— Russell’s Life, 89. 

“TWO MOTHERS-IN-LAW” 

While a barrister, Russell was asked, “What’s the extreme penalty 
for bigamy? “Two mothers-in-law”, said he. 

WEAPON FOR LEGAL BATTLE—THE SWORD AND NOT 

THE DAGGER 

“The lawyer must remember that in the battle, his weapon must 
always be the sword of the soldier, and never the dagger of the assassin.” 

— The Bar as a Profession — Youth’s Companion, Feb., 1896. 

INTERNATIONAL LAW—WHAT IT IS 

“International law is neither more nor less than what civilized nations 
have agreed shall be binding on one another as international law.” 

—In Bering Sea Arbitration. 

ORATORY—DID NOT AROUSE RUSSELL, EXCEPT ON GREAT 

OCCASIONS 

“Russell was never quite at home in the higher ways of oratory. He 
needed the pressure of a great issue to exhibit his powers of eloquence 
at their best, and even in the House of Commons I fancy he never quite 
justified his unrivalled position at the bar. But in that special gift of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


609 


eloquence that makes for power in advocacy there was surely no man 
of his time who could claim to be his equal. Within the arena of the 
Court, his personality imposed itself; in the stress of the conflict it would 
even be menacing. It exercised its influence upon the jury; it was not 
unfelt upon the Bench. Like all great advocates, he was at his best when 
the ^avity of the issue summoned all his resources. He was only fully 
inspired when his individuality was fuUy and deeply engaged, and for 
that he needed the spur of something deflnite, concrete, and individual. 
His gifts of oratory were conspicuous. In those Northern Circuit days 
I used constantly to notice greater freedom of picturesqueness of gesture, 
a more complete surrender to a mood of passionate utterance than any of 
his fellows could command. These things were his in virtue of his birth¬ 
right as an Irishman. But they were not at his service upon an issue 
that was coldly intellectual or remotely abstract. There was in his nature 
that purely combative element that could only And its full expression 
in the battle of litigation; the clash of ideas left them comparatively 
cold; he was so far an artist that he needed to be moved and stirred by 
facts that were moulded into a deflnite story of individual fortunes 
—then and only theD^ the full force of his personality came into play. 
At such moments his strength far outmeasured the weight of gifts that 
were merely intellectual; such gifts, however considerable, were then en¬ 
forced by qualities of character, and even of temper, very difficult to 
deflne but still more difficult to resist.” 

— J. Comyns Carr’s 'Some Eminent Victorians,’ 52. 

RUSSELL AND COLERIDGE 

“It has often been a subject of discussion among lawyers whether 
Charles Russell or John Duke Coleridge was the greater advocate. I 
am not sure that Russell was quite at his best in the Baccarat Case, 
but so far as that case was concerned, I think no careful student of the 
trial would deny the supremacy to Coleridge — for the very flne speci¬ 
men of judicial advocacy which he dehvered the next morning in his 
charge, as he was the Judge before whom the case was tried. The charge 
was ample proof of his superiorty to Russell in the art of advocacy.” 

—Sir Edward Clarke—in his ‘ The Story of My Life,’ 297. 

CLARKE’S ESTIMATE OF RUSSELL AS AN ADVOCATE 

“At the bar Charles Russell had been one of the most powerful 
advocates of his time. His industry and energy and shrewd and rapid 
judgment made him always a very formidable opponent. And they 
were greatly helped by his personal advantages. A commanding presence, 
a full, clear, resonant voice, a flashing eye and imperious gesture, often 
bore down opposition, and unnerved the witness he was cross-examining, 
or a young counsel who was appearing against him, sometimes, even the 
judge. When he had a very strong case and felt certain of winning, he 
was superb. But, if difficulties unexpectedly arose, he became impatient 
and irritable, and would often compel a reluctant chent to an unsatis¬ 
factory compromise. When he became a judge, the faults of manner 
and temper, which had prevented his being very popular at the bar, 
gradually disappeared. His death at the age of sixty-eight was a na¬ 
tional calamity; for he was a judge of the highest class, just, painstaking, 
and courteous, sound in learning, and resolute that right should be done. 
I have no doubt that if he had been spared for ten years longer he 
would have ranked among the greatest of English judges.”—This was 
said of him in 1896, during the trial of the Dr. Jameson Case, in which 
Sir Edward Clarke appeared for the prisoner, who was convicted. 

— Clarke’s 'The Story of My Life,’ 328. 


010 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


ENGLISH AND IRISH JURIES DIFFER 

“Juries differ widely. Sir Charles Russell used to say, for instance, 
that there was all the difference in the world between English and Irish 
juries. Irish juries enjoyed the fun and the drama of a trial; they entered 
into it all, and appreciated the cut-and-thrust; whereas English juries 
were concerned more with wondering how soon they would be re¬ 
leased.”— Manchester Guardian. 

DESCRIPTION OF RUSSELL 

“RusseU rapidly became, in London, what he was always in Lancashire, 
the favorite leader in nisi prius actions. The list of causes celehres in 
the period 1880-1894, is really a record of Russell’s cases, and, for a greater 
part, Russell’s victories. The best known exceptions, from the latter 
category, was the libel action. Belt v. Lawes, in 1882, which after a 
trial before Baron Huddleston and a special jury, lasting more than 
forty days, resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff, for whom Hardinge 
Gifford (aHerwards Lord Chancellor Halsbury) appeared as leading 
counsel. 

“The triumph of his client in the Colin Campbell divorce suit, in 1886, 
afforded, perhaps, the most brilliant instance of Russell’s forensic ca¬ 
pacity, in private litigation. 

“As a Judge he was dignified, without pompousness, quick without 
being irritable, and masterful without tyranny. A well-built frame; 
a strong, striking face, with a broad forehead, keen gray eyes, and a full 
sensitive mouth; a voice which, though not musical, was rich, and re¬ 
sponded well to strong emotions, whether of indignation, or scorn, or 
pity; an amazing power of concentrating thought; and intellectual grasp, 
promptly seizing the real points of the most entangled case, and rejecting 
all that was secondary, or petty, or irrelevant; a faculty of lucid and 
forcible expression, which without literary ornateness or grace of style 
could on fit occasions, rise to impassioned eloquence,—all these things, 
Russell had. But beyond and above all these was his immense personality, 
and embodiment of energetic will which rivetted attention, dominated 
his audience, and bore down opposition. * * * He was not a learned lawyer, 
in the sense in which Willes, or Mellish, or Blackburn were learned lawyers, 
he did not possess the fine legal acumen of his great contemporary, 
Herschell; but he had a sufficient apprehension of legal principles. * * * 

“After he took sick, in 1872, he divided the best leading work of the 
circuit with Holker, Herschell and Pope.” 

—Sir Charles Russell, 11 edition Ency. Brit. 

(Russell was born Nov. 10, 1832, at Bellybot, County of Down, Ire¬ 
land; educated at Harkins’ school at Newry, and St. Vincent’s College, 
Castleknock, Dublin; died in London, Aug. 10, 1900. After reading 
law in Belfast, finishing in 1854, he practiced in Belfast four years, where 
he studied for the bar at Trinity College, Dublin, and was admitted in 
London, 1858; that year married Ellen Mulholland, in Belfast; his 
mother gave him on his wedding, 1,000 pounds, and Russell struck out 
as a barrister in London, Jan., 1859. At first made his way by writing 
a pamphlet on the rights of Irishmen before the law, and corresponding 
for a Dublin paper and a London .Catholic newspaper. He made the 
first year 120 pounds, and doubled his income every four years. The 
first year of his practice, 1859, his income was $885; 1860, $1305; 1861, 
$2,205; 1862, $5,080; 1863, $5445; 1864, $8,695; 1865, $10,855; 1866, 
$11,835; 1867, $15,540; 1868, $15,135; 1869, $16,790; 1870, $21,150; 
1871, $15,000; 1872, $20,000; 1873, $27,000; 1874, $54,000; 1878, $55,510; 
1881, $73,330; 1892, $90,665; 1893, $112,585; in 1886, became attorney- 
general, and again in 1892-4, when he was made Chief Justice. He had 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


611 


been 35 years in practice, had worn “silk” 22 years. As a lawyer there 
was no man more widely known in England; and in the law courts was 
the first of his time. His was not a subtle mind, nor was it stored with 
great learning. He was more than a great orator, he was a great person¬ 
ality. Bowen has described him as an “elemental force.” He was one of 
those men whose coming in and going out of a room made a difference). 

DUTY OF JURY 

“You are the appointed judges and arbiters in the case. The respon¬ 
sibility will be yours alone, and will be the responsibility of each one 
among you; for the law in its wisdom has fixed your number so large 
that the heated—it might be intemperate, or hasty—^judgment of one 
or two shall not destroy and outweigh the patient, determined, and 
anxious judgment of the rest. So select is your number at the same time 
as to preserve to each one of you a sense of individual responsibility; 
for the verdict which you give shall be by the law the verdict of each one 
of you. This man, standing as he does, friendless and alone, stands al¬ 
most within the shadow of the scaffold. Can you—will you—ought 
you—for this is the important point—save him? You ought not, I say, 
though I am his advocate, if after careful, anxious, and thorough exam¬ 
ination and consideration of the facts of this case you come to the con¬ 
clusion that the finger of duty points sternly, conclusively, irresistibly 
to a verdict of guilty. But if, after that anxious consideration, a doubt 
remains—^if you feel that there are parts of that evidence, and vital parts, 
upon which you cannot stand, for they seem to crumble away beneath your 
feet—then it will be your duty to say, whatever suspicions you have, 
that the prisoner is entitled to the benefit of the doubt which remains 
present in your minds, after anxious, solemn—I would almost say in 
so serious a matter, your prayerful—consideration of the facts of the 
case. The law gives him the benefit of the doubt, and justice requires 
that he should have it. I make no appeal to you for mercy. Yours is 
not the prerogative of mercy; but you are administering a law which is 
itself merciful; which esteems it to be a less grievous thing that the 
guilty should at times escape than that the innocent should perchance 
suffer. In the spirit of that law, with all the earnestness of which I am 
capable, I appeal to you on behalf of the prisoner.” 

—Sir Charles Rvssell in Defense of Patrick O' Donnell. 

Sir Charles Russell (Lord Killowen), was born in Newry, Ireland, 
1832 and died in 1900. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1859, 
was appointed queen’s counsel in 1872, served in Parliament as a hberal 
(1880-94), and was attorney-general in the Gladstone administrations 
of 1886 and 1892. As a cross-examiner he was almost without a rival 
at the English bar, and greatly enhanced his reputation as an advocate 
by the masterly speech he made before the Parnell Commission (1889), 
where he appeared with H. H. Asquith (later prime minister) as counsel 
for Parnell. He was one of the counsel for Britain in the Bering Sea 
Fisheries Arbitration (1893^ presided at the trial of the Jameson raiders 
(1896), and was one of the arbitrators in the British Guiana and Vene¬ 
zuela Boundary Commission. In 1894 he was made a lord of appeal and 
raised to the peerage for life, and later in the same year succeeded Lord 
Coleridge as chief-justice. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold 
this office since the Reformation. In 1896 he made a powerful speech 
on international arbitration before the American Bar Association. 

— The Author. 


JOHN RUTLEDGE (1739-1800), South Carolina 

ORIGIN AND END OF GOVERNMENT 

“The consent of the people is the origin, and their happiness the end 
of government.”— From Speech to the S. C. Assembly, Apr. 11, 1776. 

DR. RAMSEY’S TRIBUTE 

“While Massachusetts boasts of her Adams; Connecticut of her Ells¬ 
worth; New York of her Jay; Pennsylvania of her Wilson; Delaware of 
her Bayard; Virginia of her Henry, South Carolina rests her claim on 
the talents and eloquence of John Rutledge.” 

— Ramsey's History of the U. S. ^ 

WASHINGTON ON HIS ORATORY 

“Washington said Rutledge was the greatest orator in the Conti¬ 
nental Congress.”— Martha J. Lamb,—13 'Mag. of American History,' 331. 

DIFFICULT CASES AND LARGE FEES 

“He was employed in the most difficult causes, and retained with the 
largest fees given in his day. The client in whose service he engaged 
was surprised to be in a fair way of gaining his cause. His qualities as 
a lawyer and advocate were of a character to ensure success. He had a 
penetrating judgment and great quickness of perception, intuitively 
seizing upon the strong points of a case, presenting them to the court 
and jury with remarkable energy, eloquence and success.” 

— L. B. Proctor,—'Lawyer and Client,' 312. 

HIS PREPARATIONS FOR THE LAW 

“After an excellent classical education, Rutledge entered as a law stu¬ 
dent in the Temple, in London, and proceeding as a barrister, came out to 
Charleston, and began the active practice in his profession in 1761. 
In his first cause—an action for breach of promise of marriage—his 
eloquence astonished all who heard him. His business became large, 
and he at once took rank among the able members of the bar. With Gads¬ 
den and Lynch he was sent to the Congress at New York in 1765, and 
his bold denunciation of the Stamp Act filled with wonder the members 
of distant provinces. He returned to the bar, and for ten years devoted 
himself exclusively to practice. In 1774 he became a member of the 
Continental Congress, and Patrick Henry called him the foremost 
orator of that body.”— Carson's History of the U. S. Supreme Court, lJ^3-4. 

CRIEF JUSTICE OF U. S. 

President Washington, in 1795, nominated Rutledge Chief Justice of 
the United States, and he presided over the Supreme Court during 
August of that year; but in December of the same year the Senate 
failed to confirm the nomination—the real reason being that his mind 
had become seriously impaired. He died five years later. 


EDWARD G. RYAN (1810-1880), Wisconsin 

CONSERVATISM 

“Pure conservatism is always wrong, civilization is never fixed. No 
Joshua has power to stay the course of the human mind. Change is 
the necessity of human history, progress the duty of the human race. 
Pure conservatism has no place in the annals of mankind. It concedes 
the past, but denies the future. It worships the actual, but anathematizes 
the possible. Its creed is the present because it is the present. It holds 
with' Pope that whatever is, is right. It is the bigot of the present, 
without sympathy with the past, or prophecy of the future. Content 
where it finds itself, pure conservatism sits down by the wayside, while 
the march of civilization passes by and presses on the promised land of 
the future, guided by its dark v/ay by faith in the destiny of man as 
by a pillar of fire.”— Edward G. Ryan, of Wisconsin. 

At the age of 64 was appointed a member of the Supreme Court of 
the State, which he held for 6 years. Was renowned as an advocate and 
an orator, and established a reputation as judge equally enduring, though 
his temper was uncertain and at times violent. He was born near Enfield, 
County of Meath, Ireland; educated seven years at Clongowes, Wood 
College, Ireland; came to America in 1830, admitted in 1836, after study¬ 
ing law and teaching in N. Y. City; and settled in Chicago; moved to 
Racine, Wis., in 1842, to Milwaukee in 1848. When appointed to the 
State Supreme Court, he said: “This is the summit of my ambition; it 
is the place to which I have looked, but it has been so long delayed that 
I have ceased to expect it.” 

JUSTICE 

“It is the habit in many of the States to place a statue of Justice upon 
their courthouses and capitols. It is well, Mr. President, that no such 
statue adorns the dome of this capitol, before the judgment in this cause 
shall have settled the standard of public justice in this State. If by your 
judgment this defendant is to be the model of judicial integrity, his conduct 
your standard of judicial purity, let the statue of Justice be ordered for 
your capitol. But be true to your standard. Follow no false precedents. 
It is the habit to represent Justice as a pure, young and beautiful maiden, 
chastely and modestly robed, with her eyes blindfolded, with her virgin 
hand holding out the pure scales of Justice, suspended and poised in the 
open light of day before the world. That has been the sculptor’s dream of 
Justice, sanctioned by the nations of the earth. But with a new standard 
follow no old precedents. Ask your sculptor for no pure, blinded, virgin 
as your ideal of justice. Tell him to erect upon the dome of this capitol 
t he marble image of a jaded, decayed, broken, unclean, diseased wanton, 
blinking from behind the distorted bandage put upon her eyes to dupe 
the scruples of mankind, and reaching forth the hand which has dropped 
the sword of Justice, to put the weight of avarice and lust and every 
unclean passion into the scales to bear down truth and right.” 

— E. J. Ryan, from peroration in an argument. 

CHRIST’S DIVINITY 

“About the time that Cicero, the greatest man of the Roman Empire, 
gave the world the labored production of his great intellect there lived 
an unlettered young man in the province of Galilee, who before he was 


614 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


33 years old, spoke the sermon from Mt. Olive. Eighteen hundred years 
have passed, and the inspiration of the Sermon on the Mount rules 
in every civilized land, while Cicero’s orations find place only on a few 
musty shelves. If this is not divinity, then it certainly is a human 
miracle.”— Bon. Edward G. Ryan, of Wis. 

PROFESSIONAL HONESTY 

“Craft is the vice, not the spirit of the profession. Trick is professional 
prostitution. Falsehood is professional apostasy. The strength of a 
lawyer is in a thorough knowledge of legaT truth, in thorough devotion 
to legal right. Truth and integrity can do more in the profession than the 
subtlest and wiliest devices. The power of integrity is the rule; the power 
of fraud is the exception. Emulation and zeal lead lawyers astray; 
but the general law of the profession is duty, not success. In it is but 
the verdict of little minds. Professional duty, faithfuUy and well per¬ 
formed, is the lawyer’s glory. This is equally true of the Bench and Bar.” 

American Bar: “The American aristocracy of brain is substantially 
the American Bar.”— Edward G. Ryan of Wis. 

A LAWYER’S DUTY 

“This is the true ambition of a lawyer: To obey God in the service of 
society; to fulfill His law in the order of society; to promote His order in 
the subordination of society to its own law adopted under _His author¬ 
ity; to minister His justice by the nearest approach to it under the 
municipal law which human intelhgence and conscience can accomplish. 
To serve man by diligent study and true counsel of the municipal 
law; to fill the alloted part in protecting society and its members 
against wrong, in enforcing all rights and redressing all wrongs; and to 
answer before God and man according to the scope of his office and 
duty for the true and just administration of the municipal law. There 
go to this ambition, high integrity of character and life; inherent love 
of truth and right; intense sense of obedience, of subordination to law, 
because it is law; deep reverence of all authority, human and divine; 
generous sympathy with man, and profound dependence on God. These 
we can all command. There should go high intelhgence. That we can-, 
not command. But every reasonable degree of intelligence can con¬ 
quer adequate knowledge for meritorious service in the profession.” 

—Judge Ryan, as told hy Win.dow, ‘The Story of a Great Court,’ 
316. 

CONTEMPT OF COURT 

In arguing a case before the Supreme Court, Ryan called the State 
attorney a vagabond, and was fined $25 by 4he court. When the 
court adjourned, and before the judges could get out of their chairs. 
Judge Ryan arose, white with wrath, and shouted: “This court has fined 
me $25 for giving my opinion of the State attorney. God only knows 
how much it would fine me, if I should give my opinion of the Court.” 

—Consul Willshire Butterfield, 5 ‘Mag. Western History,’ 8^0 {1886). 


WOMAN’S PURITY 

“He who lays his hands upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, 
is a brute. I say more; he who puts his hand upon a woman, even in 
kindness, save in that kindness which is authorized by the relations 
between them; he who lays his hands in the authorized instinct of sex 
upon a woman insults and wrongs her. I speak not here of bestial assaults 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


615 


upon the sanctity of woman’s person. I care not whether man’s arm 
be thrown gently around the waist, or man’s hand clasp the hand of 
woman; I care not what the imposition of hands may be, if it be the 
imposition of sex unauthorized by the relations of the parties, or the free 
consent of the woman first given, it is a brutal assault. It is the assault 
of lust upon the outworks of chastity. It is an attempt to debauch. 
God has made man strong and woman weak. The same God has made 
human society dependent on the chastity of woman, and on man’s 
faith in it. Take chastity from woman, and family, kindred and home, 
things unknown as amongst the beasts of the wilderness. What pro¬ 
tects society? What upholds the purity of woman, which is the hfe and 
being of woman upon this earth? Ruled by the laws of mere physical 
force, they walk upon the earth subjects of man’s passion, as a man 
walldng the wilderness of Africa is the subject of the untamed appetite 
of the wild beasts who roam there in the supremacy of brute force. But 
God has given to woman a chastity of being that men worship like an 
idol. God making woman weak in body, has made her strong in purity; 
and she walks this earth for all time, free and secure in her native modesty, 
unapproached, save in honor, unsullied even in thought. That is God’s 
character to woman, that is her guard on earth. And the man, I care 
not who or what, unlicensed by any relation of le^timate affection, 
claiming no father’s, no son’s, no husband’s, no recognized and accepted 
lover’s rights; the man who in the effrontery of passion, or the disguised 
approaches of passion, but raises his hand towards her, aye, but looks 
his lust to her, is a brute who outrages not merely her, but outrages all 
the sanctities of human nature in her person.” 

—From his speech in the impeachment of Judge Levi Hubbell, before 

the Wisconsin Assembly, commenting upon the Judge’s indecent acts. 

5 ^Mag. West. Hist.,’ 885-6. 

ROBERT M. LaFOLLETTE’S TRIBUTE 

“He was one of the most remarkable men who ever served at the 
Wisconsin bar. It was he who had written the epoch-making decision 
sustaining the Potter Law, which in no small measure laid the foundation 
for judicial action in this country upon the control of corporations. An 
Irishman by birth, with a fine legal education. Of an erratic, im¬ 
pulsive and passionate temperament, in his decisions he was as cold 
and judicial as any judge who ever sat on the bench. I remember Ms 
bowed figure, Ms fine, almost femimne features, Ms wavy auburn hair, 
and the luminous, impressive eyes wMch glowed as the old man talked 
there in the Assembly Chamber (to the graduating class, at Madison, in 
June, 1873). His voice shook with emotion and his prophetic words, 
which I have never forgotten, conveyed powerfully the feeling of many 
thoughtful men of that time.” 

PROPHETIC FORESIGHT 

“There is looming up a new and dark power. I cannot dwell upon the 
signs and shocking omens to be greater than it ever has been since the 
downfall of the Roman Empire. The enterprises of the country are 
aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly 
marching, not for economic conquests only, but for political power. 
For the first time really in our polities money is taking the field as an 
orgamzed power. * * * Already, here at home, one great corpora¬ 

tion has trifled with the sovereign power, and insulted the State. There 
is great fear that it, and its great rival, have confederated to make 
partition of the State and share its spoils. * * * The question will 

arise, and arise in your day, though not fully in mine, ‘WMch shall rule. 


616 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


wealth or man; which shall lead, money or intellect; who shall fill public 
stations, educated and patriotic, free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate 
capital?’ — Said by Judge Ryan: ‘La Follette’s Autobiography.’ 

THE LAWYER’S FAME 

“But yet a few years, and we, his contemporaries (speaking of a deceased 
lawyer, at memorial services) shall have passed away, too. Then will 

there be little left of Mr.-’s professional career, except vague 

traditions and doubtful anecdotes. So passes away the fame of a great 
lawyer. We see men of inferior parts give to history names, such as they 
are, while lawyers, their moral and intellectual superiors, are forgotten. 
That is not because the life of a lawyer is less useful or honorable, but 
because the immediate subjects of a lawyer’s labors rarely enter into 
what we call history. The heroes of history are not always, perhaps 
not often, the truly great. The faithful discharge of the duties of a pro¬ 
fession, often exercising the most sacred measure of human faith and the 
highest order of human ability, the confidence and admiration of con¬ 
temporaries for these, are the only glory of a lawyer.’’ 

—Remarks of Judge Ryan, Memorial Services of a deceased brother 
Lawyer. 

THE INDEPENDENCE OP THE BAR 

“He (Judge Hubbell) tells the bar, by the God of Heaven! whom they 
shall take for clients. He tells the world that no lawyer at his bar shall 
hold his favor if he dare to advocate the cause of those in his displeasure. 
I tell you, sir (turning to the defendant), that when you dictate to the 
bar, you do not know the bar. I am proud to say it to you, face to face, 
before this solemn Court, that you do not know the spirit of the legal 
profession. You may have been in it longer than I who say it, but you 
have not belonged to it long enough to learn the high and honorable 
spirit of the profession. To Rotate to an honorable young lawyer whom 
he shall take for his client, whose legal rights he shall assume to advocate! 
The legal profession has done many bad things and has produced many 
bad men; but it is a glorious old profession, and I love it and am proud 
of it. It may do in these days of demagogues to denounce it; but I say 
now and always, here and elsewhere, what aU history proves, that there 
was seldom a great stride made in human progress on which the bar 
was not a moving power. It is an honorable profession, an independent 
profession. No judge has ever cowed it or broken its independence. 
Touch its independence and it rebels to a man, shoulder to shoulder, 
standing up against the invasion of its rights. A corrupt judge may 
disorganize it; but a tyrannical court can neither bend it nor break it. 
The relation of a lawyer to his client is a peculiar and important one. 
Life, character, liberty, prosperity, all that is dear and sacred in life, 
are the trust of the client to his lawyer. The world may assail; the world 
may persecute; death and ruin may overhang; all men may desert, but 
the unfortunate is ever secure in the zeal and loyalty of his advocate. 
And this is the relation the defendant tampers with; this is the profession 
he seeks to bend to his caprice or his ambition.” —From Speech in Impeach¬ 
ment of Judge Levi Hubbell. 

SOME OF HIS POWERS 

“His unbounded fertility of resources, his command of language, his 
power of invective, were the wonder of the profession and the public.” 
— Milwaukee Sentinel, Oct. 20, 1880. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


617 


A JUDGE’S PRAYER 

“O God of all truth, knowledge and judgment, without whom nothing 
is true or wise, or just, look down with mercy upon Thy servants whom 
Thou sufferest to sit in earthly seats of judgment, to administer Thy 
justice to Thy people. Enlighten their ignorance and inspire them with 
Thy judgments. Grant them grace, truly and impartially to administer 
Thy justice and to maintain Thy truth in the glory of Thy name. And 
of Thy infinite mercy so direct and dispose my heart that I may this day 
fulfill all my duty in Thy fear, and fall into no error of judgment. Give 
me grace to hear patiently, to consider diligently, to understand rightly, 
and to decide justly. Grant me due sense of humility, that I be not 
misled by my wilfulness, vanity or egotism. Of myself I humbly 
acknowledge my own unfitness and unworthiness in Thy sight, and with¬ 
out Thy gracious guidance I can do nothing right. Have mercy upon 
me, a poor, weak, frail sinner, groping in the dark; and give me grace 
so to judge others now, that I may not myself be judged when Thou 
comest to judge the world with Thy truth. Grant my prayer, I beseech 
Thee, for the love of Thy son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.” 

—Composed hy Judge Ryan, and found among his 'payers, after his 
death: ^Green Bag,' Vol. 25, H8. 

THE LORD’S PRAYER 

“Judge Ryan was once arguing a case in the old Supreme Court Room, 
at Madison, a trivial case, with only the judges, a half dozen lav^ers, 
the State Librarian and a few loungers and a few others about, ‘audience 
fit, though few.’ Some allusion in the discussion led him to refer to the 
Lord’s prayer, and he at once launched into a most beautiful, eloquent 
and affecting eulogy of that form of devotion, the divine sweetness of 
which he described, and in radiant terms extolling the loveliness of the 
author. Above all, he eulogized that portion of the prayer which asks, 
‘lead us not into temptation,’ which he paraphrased in all the pathetic 
forms of which language was capable, and which he said was commended 
to us as a form of petition by one who knew the frailties of our nature, 
the attractions of guilty delight and the strength of the impulses that 
lead to wrong. The few hearers listened spell-bound to his matchless 
eloquence till the episode closed, when he resumed the argument of some 
stupid points in the dry case before him.” 

— Reed's ^Bench and Bar of Wisconsin,' 61-2. 


WEBSTER ON JEFFERSON 

“Jefferson has more deeply impressed his opinions and theories, as 
well as his practical ideas of government upon the legislation and destinies 
of the country than any man that ever lived. He showed great contempt 
for forms, dignity and red-tape; said our Repubhc should not pattern 
from any other government in these respects; it was and ought to be, 
emphatically a democratic government. * * * And Webster thought 

it fortunate that Jefferson’s ideas prevailed.” 

— Harvey's ^Reminiscences of Webster,' 212-13. 



SIR JAMES SCARLETT, lord abinger (1769-1844), 

England 

RECEIPT FOR SUCCESS AS AN ADVOCATE 

“I take care to press home the one principal point of the case, without 
paying much attention to the others. I find also that when I exceed half 
an hour, I am always doing mischief to my client. If I drive into the heads 
of the jury unimportant matter, I drive out matter more important than 
I had previously lodged there.” 

Says John Campbell, in 6 Lives of the Chief Justices, pp. 7-8: “Den¬ 
man’s professional emoluments at the bar, though lately considerable, 
had never been on the same scale as those of Scarlett and Sugden (the 
latter, a great chancery practictioner), and several others of the leading 
contemporaries, and they were then absorbed by the expenses incident 
to a numerous family, and style of living which Avithout being profuse, 
was generous and liberal.” 

DEXTERITY IN GETTING IN EVIDENCE 

Mr. Justice Patterson related the following of Scarlett’s dexterity in 
the conduct of a cause; the ends of justice being attained by a theatrical 
display of incredulity which deceived both Brougham and Parke, the 
counsel on the other side. Patterson, as junior counsel, was for the defend¬ 
ant. Scarlett told Patterson that he would manage to make Brougham 
produce in evidence a written instrument the withholding of which, on 
account of the insufficiency of the stamp, was essential for the success 
of his cause. Patterson observing that even if he could throw 
Brougham off his guard, he would not be successful with Parke; but 
Scarlett said he would try. And he then conducted the case with such 
consummate dexterity, pretending to disbelieve the existence of the docu¬ 
ment referred to, that Brougham and Parke resolved to produce it, not 
being aware that Scarlett had any suspicion of its invalidity. Patterson 
described the extreme surprise and mortification of Brougham, 
with a fiourish of trumpets about the ‘non-existence of the document 
his learned friend had reckoned upon so confidently.’ Patterson went on to 
say that the way Scarlett asked to look at the instrument, and his assumed 
astonishment at the discovery of the insufficiency of the stamp 
essential for the success of his cause, were a masterpiece of acting.” 

—From Scarlett’’s Life hy his Son. 

SCARLETT’S TILT WITH A WITNESS 

At a trial in the Court of King’s Bench, in 1833, between certain 
music publishers as to an illegal piracy of an arrangement of the song of 
“The Old English Gentlemen,” Cooke, the actor, was subpoened as a 
witness by one of the parties. On his cross-examination by Scarlett, for 
the opposite side, that learned counsel questioned him thus: 

“Now, sir, you say that the two melodies are the same, but are different; 
now what do you mean by that, sir.” 

To this Tom promptly answered: 

“I said that the notes in the two copies were alike, but with a different 
accent, the one being the common time, the other six-eight time; and 
consequently, the position of the accented notes are different.” 

“Now, pray, sir, don’t beat about the bush, but explain to the jury, 
who are supposed to know nothing about music, the meaning of what 
you call accent.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


619 


Cooke: “Accent in music is a certain stress laid upon a particular 
note, in the same manner as you would lay a stress upon any given word 
for the purpose of being better understood. Thus, if I were to say ‘You 
are an ass,’ it rests on ass; but if I were to say, ‘You are an ass,’ it rests 
on you, Sir James.” 

Shouts of laughter by the whole Court followed this repartee. Silence 
at length having been obtained, the Judge with much seeming gravity, 
accosted the counsel thus: “Are you satisfied. Sir James?” Sir James 
(who had become scarlett in more than name) in a great huff, said 
“The witness may go down.” 

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS AT THE BAR 

“Bonhomie, and close study of human nature as indicated by the coun¬ 
tenance. * ♦ * I take care to press home the one principal point of 

the case, without paying much attention to the others. I find also that 
when I exceed half an hour, I am always doing mischief to my client. 
If I drive into the heads of the jury unimportant matters, I drive out 
matter more important than I had previously lodged there.” 

—He was the most successful advocate of his time. 

SCARLETT’S KNOWLEDGE OF CLASSICS 

“I translated into English, and when I had nearly forgotten the original, 
back into the Latin, by way of exercise. I became familiar with all the 
works of Cicero, many of his orations I translated into English. And my 
relish for his works has never ceased. I read also in French, the works 
of Racine, Boileau, Montesquieu, RoUin’s History and Belles Lettres, 
Bossuet, and many others.” 

—From Scarlett’s Autobiography, 12 Am. Law Review, 4^3. 
SCARLETT ON HIS VERDICTS 

“My success was chiefly due to the rule I made of selecting one partic¬ 
ular juryman, not necessarily the foreman, and addressing the argument 
to him personally, working away till I felt I had convinced this man, and 
could rely on him, when the verdict was being considered.” 

— Manchester Guardian, Nov. 17, 1920. 

Scarlett was born in 1769 and died in 1844. His greatest yearly 
income was $92,500. He was altogether the greatest jury advocate of 
modern times. 

EXAMINATION AND CROSS-EXAMINATION 

“I learned by my experience that the most useful duty of an advocate 
is the examination of witnesses, and that much more mischief than 
benefit generally results from cross-examination. I therefore rarely 
allowed that duty to be performed by my colleagues. I cross-examined, 
in general, very little, and more with a view to enforce and illustrate the 
facts I meant to rely upon than to affect the witness’s credit, for the most 
part a vain attempt.” 

—From C. H. Hill’s Revieiv of Campbell Scarlett’s Memoir of his 

Father {Lord Abinger) 12 American Law Review, pp. 39-68, Oct., 1877. 

SCARLETT’S PRESENTATION OF A CASE 

“I made it my business to know and remember the principal facts, 
to lay the unimportant wholly out of memory; to open the case, if for 
plaintiff, and when I expected evidence for the defendant, in the shortest 


620 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


and plainest manner, with no other object than to make the jury compre¬ 
hend the evidence which they would shortly hear. I very seldom thought 
it necessary to make any anticipation of the defendant’s case. It is, 
indeed, oftentimes dangerous to do so, as it leads the judge and jury to 
seek for support to it in the plaintiff’s evidence. I found from experience 
as well as theory that the most essential part of speaking is to make 
yourself understood. For this purpose it is absolutely necessary that the 
court and jury should know as early as possible de qua re agitur. It was 
my habit, therefore, to state, in the simplest form that the truth and the 
case would admit, the proposition of wiich I maintained the affirmative 
and the defendant’s counsel the negative, and then without reasoning 
upon them, the leading facts in support of my assertion. * * * More¬ 

over, I made it a rule in general rather to understate than overstate it 
without reading over and undertaking the whole evidence.” 

—In 12th American Review, Art, Lord Abinger, p. 54- 

HIS MANNER BEFORE A JURY 

n' 

“A spectator unacquainted with the courts might have supposed that 
anybody rather than the portly, full-faced, florid man, who was taking his 
ease on the comfortable cushions of the front row, was the counsel engaged 
in the cause. Or if he saw him rise to cross-examine a witness, he might 
be apt to think him certainly too indolent to attend properly to his business 
so cool, indifferent and apparently unconcerned was the way in which the 
facts which his questions elicited were left to their fate, as though it 
were of no consequence whether they were attended to or not. Ten to 
one with him that the plaintiff’s counsel would get the verdict, so clear 
seemed the case and so slight the opposition. But in the course of time, 
the defendant’s turn would come; and then the large-headed, ruddy¬ 
faced, easy-going advocate would rise slowly from his seat, not standing 
quite upright, but resting on his left hand placed upon the bar, and turn¬ 
ing sideways to the jury to commence the defense of his client. Still 
the same unpretending air was continued; it almost seemed too great an 
exertion to speak; the chin of that ample face rested upon the still more 
ample chest as though the motion of the lips alone would be enough for 
all that might have to be said. So much for the first impression. A few 
moments’ reflection sufficed to dispel the idea that indolence had anything 
to do with the previous quiescence of the speaker. Now it became clear 
that all the while he seemed to have been taking his ease bodily, he had 
been using his powers of observation and understanding. That keen, 
gray eye had not stolen glances at the jury, nor at the witnesses either, 
for nothing. Nor had those abandoned facts, drawn out in cross-examina¬ 
tion, been unfruitful seeds cast in barren places. Low as the tone of voice 
was, it was clear and distinct. It was not a mere organ of sound, but a 
medium of communication between the mind of the advocate and the 
minds of the jury. Sir James Scarlett did not attempt, like Denman or 
Brougham, to carry the feelings of a jury by storm before a torrent of 
invective or of eloquence; nor was there any obvious sophistry, such as 
occupied too large a space in the speeches of Campbell or Wilde; it was 
with facts, admitted, omitted or slurred over, as best suited his purpose, 
and with inferences made obvious in spite of prepossessions created by 
the other side, that this remarkable advocate achieved his triumphs.” 

— Wellman's ^Art of Cross-Examination,' 166-7. 

CHARACTERIZATION BY C. H. HILL 

“He had great knowledge of law, and readiness in using it, great quick¬ 
ness of apprehension, great powers of analysis and of argumentation, a 
most sure-footed judgment and most consummate tact. His power, too, 
of concentrating his mind upon the matter before him must have been 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


621 


remarkable. Besides these, his greatest gifts, and which reveal th(' 
secret of his success, he had other personal advantages which helped to 
rnake that success almost unique. He was a man of much general culture; 
his person was handsome, and his bearing that of a gentleman; his manners 
were winning, his voice sweet and musical; and his speaking, although 
hardly eloquent, singularly persuasive. With such qualities and with 
constantly increasing experience, it is no wonder that he became in time a 
consummate advocate before both common and special juries, and also 
with the courts; for his success in arguing questions of law, both at nisi 
prius and in banc before a bench that included during his term men hke 
Lords Ellenborough and Tenterden, and Nayley, Holroyd, Littledale, 
Parks and Patterson, was not less eminent than his success with juries, 
and he is said to have gained an ascendency over Lord Tenterden equal 
to that which Erskine had previously gained over Vice-Chancellor 
Shadwell. 

“Touching Scarlett’s influence over Lord Tenterden, an amusing 
anecdote is told of the retort of Mr. Adolphus, the eminent criminal 
lawyer, when Scarlett rather arrogantly told him to remember he was 
not at the ‘Old Bailey.’ ‘I feel I am not at the Old Bailey,’ he replied; 
‘for there the judge controls the counsel, but here the counsel controls 
the judge’.”— 12 'Am. Law Review,' Art. Lord Abinger, 53. 


TRAITS OF AMERICAN CHARACTER 

“Our travels and voyages and general reading, will all be found tinged 
with the practical tendency. So, in short, are our whole lives. Engaged 
in the real old age of the world, on a new theatre, three thousand miles 
distant from the homes of our ancestors, and earnest to perform well 
our parts in the new drama of a democratic government under a represen¬ 
tative form, our first duty seems to be to draw practical instruction from 
all the treasures of the past, to enlighten and strengthen, enrich and 
guide us in our new undertaking. Hence, as is right, we bring home 
like the bee, honey from every flower, rather than flowers without honey. 
We go to India for useful drugs and silks and not for Buddhism. We go 
to the Celestial Empire for teas, not despotic principles of government 
or miserable rats and dogs for food. We visit the land of Cicero and 
Brutus for rags even for our paper, and sulphur for arts, more than for 
gems, paintings, or mosaics, though not wholly neglecting the latter, 
when leisure and wealth permit; and to the neighborhood of the Pyramids 
and the land of the bow string for fruits and dyestuffs, but not Moham¬ 
medanism or broken statues. From the arid wastes around Athens and 
Rome and Jerusalem, also we are willing to obtain almost everything 
that remains which is useful; recollections and helps, from days gone by, 
to liberty and devotion, however degraded may the Saliotes or Arabs 
that now wander among the ruins where Pericles and Paul addressed the 
multitude or those where our holy Savior taught and died. But few, 
only very few, of our countrymen will any where turn aside for relics of the 
fine arts, to the neglect of what is immediately conducive to gain and 
practical utility, though some—and let letters and science crown such with 
success—may contrive to advance both objects together, by their great 
ingenuity, ample resources, untamable enterprise and munificent 
liberality.” 

—From an address by Levi Woodbury, delivered in New Hampshire 

and Massachusetts, in 1850. 



HENRY W. SCOTT ( - ), Kansas 

DEFENSE OF AN EPILEPTIC FOR MURDER 

“To say he feigned epilepsy in prison for his defense is to say that for 
two years he meditated the crime; that he anticipated this defense; 
that he, this boy, studied the mysteries of science, learned the symptoms 
of disease, and then practiced the simulation. We have called for proof 
the living members of the family. Ah, more! we have invoked the testi¬ 
mony of the dead. We have called from the grave that father and others 
to the bar of this court, to plead with their living voice and their skeleton 
fingers for justice to that forsaken son. His sisters have said that when 
the family learned of this disorder the strict injunction was laid upon them 
all never to tell it abroad. ‘For then the young people would think he 
was not right and would not go in his company any more.’ How like 
that tenderest touch in the fictions of the classic tongues, when Androm¬ 
ache stood upon the towers of Illium and saw Hector dragged by swift 
horses toward the hollow ships of the Greeks! * * * Tiie husband, 

the father, the hero is gone! They all knew of his disease; they sought to 
shield him from the rough approaches of the world. He, with his ambi¬ 
tion wasted, with his mind weakening, can sleep no more. ‘Would that 
the night were gone!’ I repeat his prayer.” 

—Henry W. Scott in Defense of Allen C. Laros, for Poisoning his 
Father. 


EDUCATION 

“ ‘The world moves,’ said Galileo, and in despite of persecution and 
dungeons, it did move; and the moral, literary and political world moves 
also; and will by your efforts and of those like you continue to move 
with such rapidity and force as never to be stopped again in its onward 
career. In the circle of blessings, this course of contributing something, 
however little, to give to everything a right and vigorous impulse, and 
to derive from everything moral as well as mental improvement, is open 
before and around us daily, and even hourly, and in the smallest as well 
as loftiest objects. Thus it has with justice, no less than beauty, been 
said: 

“ ‘There is religion in a flower; 

Its still small voice is as the voice of conscience. 

Mountains and oceans, planets, suns and systems, 

Bear not the impress of Almighty power 
In characters more legible than those 
Which he has written on the tiniest flower. 

Whose light bell bends beneath the dew-drop’s weight.’ 

“So is there religion in a crystal or a shell. They all speak to us as li\dng 
miracles when our minds are duly awakened by their wonders. So the 
fall of only the autumnal leaf is sufficient to point a moral. The fall of 
an apple suggested once to the greatest mathematicians and astron¬ 
omers, a hint for the theory of gravitation for the whole planetary 
system. The revolutions of power preach trumpet-tongued, to the politi¬ 
cian and statesman. And thus the active well disposed mind can always 
teach and be taught, improve others and be itself improved, and in short 
find: 

“ ‘Tongues in trees, sermons in stones, and good in everything.’ ” 
—Levi Woodbury, ^Remedies and Defects in American Education,' 
Washington, D. C., 18U2, 3 Woodbury’s Writings, 73-Jt. 




JAMES BROWN SCOTT (1866- ), Washington D. C. 


KENT AND MARSHALL COMPARED 

“Comparisons are frequently drawn between Marshall and Kent, and 
stress is laid upon the fact that the former divined the judgment from the 
circumstances of the case, while the latter reached a conclusion based 
upon a careful and painstaking examination and study of the authorities, 

“This is true, but it does not follow that Kent would not have reached 
Marshall’s conclusion had he trusted to the strength of the understand¬ 
ing. It is, however, the fact that the one preferred to fortify his reason 
while the other preferred reason unadorned. The difference, while 
temperamental, was, it would seem, likewise a difference in the quality 
of the niind. Marshall stood alone, either because he did not know the 
authorities or because the vigor and originahty of his mind spurned 
reliance upon others. In this way Marshall and Shaw were strangely 
alike. Kent, on the other hand, knew the authorities and preferred to 
intrench himself behind them. In this respect and this alone, Kent and 
Story are veritable brothers in the law. Both types are useful, and the four 
must be taken as ideals of the bench. 

“In one respect, however, the comparison is not wholly fair to Kent, 
because as Judge and Chancellor he dealt with problems covered by 
authority, and therefore susceptible of learned treatment. In questions 
of Constitutional Law, Marshall found few precedents and it is his glory 
that he has left many. If Kent’s method of approach be considered, it 
will be seen that the methods of the two were alike in that Kent decided 
the case on the facts and then searched for the law. Marshall declared 
the law and precedent at one and the same time. 

“The curious reader who cares to pursue the subject further and test 
the powers of both apphed to a concrete problem will find ample material 
in the various cases arising out of the exclusive grant of the State of New 
York to Messrs. Fulton and Livingstone to navigate the waters of the 
State. As a citizen of New York, with an inclination to maintain the 
just prerogative of the State, Kent decided in favor of the validity of the 
exclusive grants. Entrusted with the prerogatives of a nation, Marshall 
supported the power and dignity of the nation. Both were without 
authority, and while they did not and could not, from the circumstances 
of the case, meet upon common ground, intellectual powers of the highest 
kind are displayed in their discussion and decision of underlying principles. 

“It is not perhaps beyond the mark to suggest that Kent was right on 
the question of principles involved, and that the superb reasoning of Mr. 
Justice Curtis in Cooley vs. the Port Wardens (12 Howard, 299, 1851) 
fully sustains the contentions of the learned Chancellor that the power 
of Congress to regulate does not divest the State until Congress has acted 
and thus pre-empted the field of legislation. As to the effect of the general 
license it may well be that the great Chief Justice was right. That 
Kent was right on principle is the measured judgment of the late Pro¬ 
fessor Thayer. 

“As a further test of Kent’s quality of mind compared to Marshall’s 
resort may well be had to Hicks vs. Hotchkiss (7 Johnson’s Chancery 
Rep., 303), in which Kent took issue with Marshall’s reasoning in Sturges 
vs. Crowningshield (4 Wheat., 122). It is of interest to note that Kent’s 
view prevailed in the leading case of Ogden, vs. Saunders (12 Wheat., 
213), notwithstanding Marshall’s dissent. 

“If Marshall’s monument stands at the base of the Capitol, it is not 
without reason that the bronze statue of Kent is housed within the Library 
of Congress. 


624 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“If we now turn from the domain of Constitutional Law in which 
Marshall walks a lord among men, and surveys the other fields of law, 
the partisan of Kent may well court comparison. In the range and variety 
of the Common Law, the Chief-Justice was deficient, in technical learning, 
although the breadth of his mind is always evident. Years of profound 
study and meditation had made Kent a master of the intricacies of the 
common law, and he unravelled a knotty problem as easily as a child 
unwinds a ball of string. Soundness of reason marks both of the Chief- 
Justices, but the learning of Kent is no less marked than its absence in 
Marshall. 

“If the attention be fixed upon Chancery the verdict must be the 
same, for Kent is the admitted master in Equity. English schoolmen 
may discuss the various merits of Nottingham, Hardwicke, and Eldon, 
and award the palm to the one or the other, or resort to nice distinctions 
and qualifications. But the mere mention of American Equity suggests 
Kent at once the founder and expounder of Chancery in the United 
States. That he is without a rival in this peculiar domain is but faint praise, 
for he is without a competitor. The seven volumes of Johnson’s Chancery 
Reports do not admit of comparison, Chief-Justice Marshall has not 
a few equity decisions to his credit, but in this field he is outclassed by 
Kent. Indeed, well informed persons there are, such as the editor of 
this series (William Draper Lewis), who would not base Marshall’s claim 
to distinction upon his services to equity, 

“And finally, if International Law be considered, the scales incline 
to the side of Kent. The present writer has read in detail the various 
judgments of both in the field of international law, and has little hesitancy 
in awarding to him the primacy. It is his personal opinion that Marshall 
is equally, perhaps more admirable in international than in Constitutional 
Law, for on this subject the questions of statesmanship and public policy 
play a greater part because an International role, than in the restricted 
though not less subtle field of Constitutional Law. Marshall was not 
without guidance in matters of International Law, and his judgments 
are based upon precedent as well as theory. 

“Yet Kent stands the severest test, and the wealth of carefully digested 
authority makes each case a treatise in itself. Judge Duer’s" comment 
on the case of Griswold vs. Waddington (15 Johnson’s, 57; 16 Johnson’s, 
438) is in point and deserves quotation. * * * If to this rounded, 

universal, and almost perfect equipment we add the ever present and 
continuous claim of expounder of our law, the conclusion seems well- 
nigh inevitable that Kent rightly assumes his place as the first figure in 
American Jurisprudence.” James Brown Scott was Solicitor for the 
State Department; Prof. International Law iu George Washington 
University .—2 Great American Lawyers, 528-533. 

Mr. Scott was born in Kincardin, Ont., Canada; was graduated at 
Harvard, 1890; took the course in international law at Berlin, Heidelberg 
and Paris, 1891-4; practiced law in Los Angeles, Cal., 1894-9; organized 
the present law department in the University of S. Cal., 1896, and was 
dean, 1896-9; was professor of law at Univ. Ill., 1899-03, at Columbia 
Law School, 1903-6; and has been professor of international law at Geo. 
Washington Univ. since 1906; delegate to The Hague Peace Conference 
of 1907. He is a noted authority on international law. 


JOHN SELDEN (1584-1654), England 


SAYINGS OF JOHN SELDEN 

“The proverbial assertion that Lady Common Law must lie aloncj 
never with me. Law must be liberalized by literature.” 

“Do not undervalue the enemy by whom you have been worsted.” 

“Wise men say nothing in dangerous times. 

“Never tell your resolution beforehand.” 

“He that will keep a monkey, ’tis fit he should pay for the glasses he 
breaks.” 

“Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is in 
bringing about ends.” 

“Nature must be the groundwork of wit and art.” 

“Women ought not to know their own wit, because they will still be 
showing it, and so spoiling it.” 

“No man is the wiser for his learning. It may administer matter to 
work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man.” 

“Most men’s learning is nothing but history duly taken up.” 

“Few men make themselves masters of things they write or speak.” 

“Equity is a roughish thing, for law we have a measure. Equity is 
according to the conscience of him that is chancellor; and as that is larger 
or narrower, so is equity. ’Tis all one as if they should make the standard 
for the measure.” 

“An epitaph must be fit for the person for whom it is made: for a man 
to say all the excellent things that can be said upon one, and call that an 
epitaph, is as if a painter should make the handsomest piece he can 
possibly make, and say, ‘Tis my picture.’ ” , 

“A gallant man is above evil speaking.” 

“Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes, for 
they were easiest for his feet.” 

“Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice.” 

“ ’Tis not the eating, nor ’tis not the drinking, that is to be blamed, 
but the excess.” 

“There is no church without liturgy, nor indeed, can there be conven¬ 
iently, as there is no school without grammar.” 

“Of all actions of a man’s life, his marriage does least concern other 
people; yet, of all actions of our life, ’tis most meddled with by other 
people.” 


626 


GREAT HAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“Marriage is a desperate thing: The frogs in Aesop were extremely 
wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap 
into the well, because they could not get out again.” 

“Money makes a man laugh.” 

“ ’Tis a vain thing to talk of a heretic; for a man for his heart can think 
no otherwise than he does think.” 

“Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the 
world should think as I think.” 

/ 

“Every man has his religion. We differ about trimming.” 

“Alteration of religion is dangerous, because we know not where it 
will stay.” 

“The way to find out truths is by others’ mistakes.” ^ 

“Transubtantiation is nothing but rhetoric turned to logic.” 

“Philosophy is nothing but discretion.” 

“Pleasure is nothing but the intermission of pain, the enjoying of 
something I am in great trouble for till 1 have it.” 

“Words must be fitted to a man’s mouth. ’Twas well said of the fellow 
who was to make a speech for my lord mayor, he desired to take the 
measure of his lordship’s mouth.” 

“Affection is a thing wherein 1 look after the pleasing of myself.” 

“Patience is the chiefest fruit of study.” 

“Never kings dropped out of the clouds.” 

“There is no stretching of power. ’Tis a good rule: Eat within your 
stomach, act within your commission.” 

“General texts prove nothing.” 

f “King Janies said to the fly: ‘Have I three kingdoms, and thou 
must needs fly into my eye’? ” 

“Put out the candle, and they (light and heat) are both gone; one 
remaining without the other: so ’tis betwixt faith and works.” 

% 

“Verse proves nothing but the quantity of syllables, they are not 
meant for logic.” 

“Men are not troubled to hear a man dispraised, because they know 
though he be naught, there’s worth in others. But women are mightily 
troubled to hear any of them spoken against, as if the sex itself were 
guilty of some monstrosities.” 

“Idolatry is a man’s own thought, not in the opinion of another.” 

“Commonly we say a judgment falls upon a man for something in 
him we cannot abide.” 


GREAT SAYINGS HY GREAT LAWYERS 


()27 


“Straws show which way the wind blows.” 

“Above all things—Liberty.” (The motto which was placed upon his 
books). 

“The king cannot make a gentleman of blood, nor God Almighty, 
but he can make a gentleman by creation.” 

“Thou thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.” 

“The boy who would have married his grandmother, said to his fathen: 
‘You married my mother, why should I not marry yours?’ ” / 

“ ’Tis much the doctrine of the times that men should not please them¬ 
selves, but deny themselves everything they take delight in, not look 
upon beauty, wear no good clothes, eat no good meat, etc., which seems 
the greatest accusation that can be upon the Maker of all good things. 
If they are not to be used, why did God make them?” 

“Rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but 
no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are 
caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.” 

“I have taken much pains to know everything that is esteemed wortli 
knowing amongst men; but with all my reading, nothing now remains 
to comfort me at the close of this life but this passage of St. Paul: ‘It 
is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ 
came into the world to save sinners.’ To this T cleave, and herein do 
I find rest.” 

“It is not juggling that is to be blamed, but much juggling; for the 
world cannot be governed without it.” 

“They that cry down moral honesty, cry down that which is a great 
part of my religion, my duty toward God, and my duty toward man. 
What care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and cheats 
as soon as he comes home? On the other side, morality must not be 
without religion; for if so, it may change, as I see convenience. Religion 
must govern it. He that has not religion to govern his morality is no 
better than my mastiff dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, 
he will play with you as finely as may be; he is a very moral mastiff; 
but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face, and tear out your throat.” 

“The happiness of married life depends upon maldng small sacrifices 
with readiness and cheerfulness.” 

“Talk what you will of the Jews, that they are cursed: They thrive 
wherever they come; they are able to oblige the prince of their country 
by lending him money; none of them beg; they keep together; and as 
for their being hated, why Christians hate one another as much.” 

“They that govern most make least noise. In rowing a barge, they 
that do drudgery work, slash, puff, and sweat; but he that governs, sits 
quietly in the stern, and scarce is seen to stir.” 

“When a doubt is propounded, learn to distinguish, and show wherein 
a thing holds, and wherein it doth not hold. The not distinguishing 
where things should be distinguished, and the most confounding, where 
things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the 
world.” 


628 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“There is no book on which we can rest in a dying moment but the 
Bible.” 

Never in the whole history of literature was such prodigious literary 
activity crowded into so brief a span of life as into the ten years of Selden’s 
life from his 26th to his 36th year. The ‘ ‘Table Talk” still lives. Here we 
have the saint, the sage, and the scholar expounding under the genial 
influence of the table, mingling with wisdom, and descending for a 
time to illuminate for an “ordinary apprehension, the highest points of 
religion and the most important affairs of State.” Selden was born in 
1584; died 1654. 


OLD AGE AND THE LAW 

“Man’s capacity for happiness is certainly varied,^since I have found 
equal pleasure in the busy city and here (by the sea near Los Angeles, 
Cahfornia) in the seclusion of a small watering place, listening to the 
incessant moaning of the disconsolate sea, with little companionship, but 
plenty of good books to read. * * * I do not think of coming here 

to hve; but I should be glad of an opportunity of spending other summers 
here hke that just closing, engaged in the genial occupation of Lotus 
eating and rejoicing in the ebb and flow of the sea, shimmering in the 
triumphant and unvarying sunshine. And this brings me to another 
theme. Is it not time that you and I were leaving off the courts and the 
law, with all of the turmoil of this weary and unintelligible world, forever 
incorruptible, both to the precept and example? I am beginning to think 
so; and to long for rest like the overworked steer. Still the future is as 
yet not quite clear to me; perhaps it will never be.” 

— U. M. Rose of Little Rock, Ark., {183^- ), from Terminal, Cal., 

to John F. Dillon, N. Y. City, Sept. 21, 1903. 

Mr. Rose was then in his 70th and Judge Dillon in his 72nd year. 

.!■ —Author. 


PLAINTIFF WITH CROOKED LEG 

At one time, Wm. McKinley was pitted against John McSweeney, one 
of the most brilliant lawyers of the Ohio bar. Plaintiff, in his suit for 
damages, charged the defendant surgeon set his broken leg improperly, 
making him bow-legged. McKinley defended the surgeon. In the trial, 
McSweeney exhibited his cleint’s injured limb, which was crooked, and 
the case looked bad for the surgeon. On cross-examination, McIGnley 
asked that the other leg be bared also; though McSweeney vigorously 
objected, the Court so ordered. The second leg was more crooked than 
the one set. In his speech McKinley said: “My client seems to have 
done better by this man than Nature herself did. I recommend that 
plaintiff have his second leg broken, and then set by the surgeon to match 
the first one.” The jury quickly found for the defendant. — The Author. 





WILLIAM H. SEWARD (1801-1872), New York 


DUTY OF COUNSEL 

“ ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a commandment addressed, not to him alone 
(the prisoner), but to me, to you, to the Court, and to the whole community. 
There are no exceptions from that commandment, at least in civil life, 
save those of self-defense, and capital punishment for crimes in the due 
and just administration of law. There is not only a question, then, 
whether the prisoner has shed the blood of his fellow man, but the question 
whether we shall lawfully shed his blood. I should be guilty of murder, 
if, in my present relation, I saw the executioner waiting for an insane 
man, .and, failed to say, or failing to do in his behalf, all that my ability 
allowed. * * * error would thus be criminal, how great would 

yours be if you should render an unjust verdict? * * * 

prejudice of witnesses, of the imagination of counsel, of any ill-timed 
jest shall at any time have diverted your attention; or if any prejudg¬ 
ment which you may have brought into the jury box, or any cowardly 
fear of popular opinion shall have operated to cause you to deny to the 
prisoner that dispassionate consideration of his case which the laws of 
God and man exact of you, and if, owing to such error, this wretched 
man faU among the living, what will be your crime? You have 
violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ♦ * * is 

the Court itself above the commandment. If these judges have 
been influenced by the excitement which has brought this vast assemblage 
here, and under such influence, or under any other influence, have com¬ 
mitted voluntary error, and have denied to the prisoner or shall hereafter 
deny to him, the benefit of any fact or any principle of law, then this 
Court will have to answer for the deep transgression at the bar at which 
we shall meet again. When we appear there, none of us can plead that 
we were insane and did not know what we did; and by just so much as 
our ability and knowledge exceed those of this wretch, whom the world 
regards as a fiend in human shape, will our guilt exceed his, if we be 
guilty.”— William H. Seward, to Jury, in Defense of Freeman, the demented 
negro, for murder, 18 ^ 6 . 

NAPOLEON 

‘‘He was an emperor. But he saw around him a mother, brothers and 
sisters, not enobled; whose humble state reminded him and the world 
that he was born a plebian; and he had no heir to wait for the imperial 
crown. He scourged the earth again, and again fortune smiled on him 
even in his wild extravagance. He bestowed kindgoms and principalities 
upon his kindred, put away the devoted wife of his youthful days, and 
another, a daughter of the Hapsburg imperial house joyfully accepted 
his proud alliance. Offspring gladdened his anxious sight; a diadem was 
placed upon its infant brow and it received the homage of princess, even 
in its cradle. Now he was indeed a monarch, a legitimate monarch, 
a monarch by divine appointment, the first of an endless succession of 
monarchs. 

“But there were other monarchs who held sway in the earth. He 
was not content, he would reign with his kindred alone. He gathered 
new and greater armies, from his own land, from subjected lands. He 
called forth the young and the brave, one from every household, from the 
Pyrenees to the Zuder Zee, from Jura to the ocean. He marshalled them 
into long and majestic columns, and went forth to seize that universal 
dominion which seemed almost within his grasp. 


630 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“But ambition had tempted fortune too far. The nations of the earth 
resisted, repelled, pursued, surrounded him. The pageant was ended. 
The crown fell from his presumptuous head. The wife who had wedded 
him in his pride forsook him when the hour of fear came upon him. 
His child was ravished from his sight. His kinsmen were degraded to 
their first estate, and he was no longer emperor, nor counsul, nor general, 
nor even a citizen, but an exile and a prisoner on a lonely island in the 
midst of the wild Atlantic. Discontent attended him here. The wayward 
man fretted out a few long years of his yet unbroken manhood, looking 
off at the earliest dawn and in evening’s latest twilight, toward that distant 
world that had only just eluded his grasp. His heart corroded. Death 
came, not unlooked for, though it came even then unwelcome. He was 
stretched on his bed within the fort which constituted his prison. A 
few fast and faithful friends stood around, with the guards who rejoiced 
that the hour of relief from long and wearisome watching was at hand. 
As his strength wasted away delirium stirred up the brain from its long 
and inglorious activity. The pageant of ambition returned. He was 
again a lieutenant, a general, a counsul, an emperor of France. He 
filled again the throne of Charlemagne. His kindred pressed around him, 
again invested with pompous pageantry of royalty. The daughter of 
the lone line of kings again stood proudly by his side, and the sunny face 
of his child shone out from beneath the diadem that encircled its flowing 
locks. The marshals of Europe awaited his command. The legions of 
the old guard were in the field, their Scarred faces rejuvenated and their 
ranks, thinned in many battles, replenished. Russia, Prussia, Denmark 
and England gathered their mighty hosts to give him battle. Once 
more he mounted his impatient charger and rushed forth to conquest. 
He waved his sword aloft and cried, 'Tete d’armee.' The feverish vision 
broke, the mockery was ended. The silver cord was loosened, and the 
warrior fell back upon his bed a hfeless corpse. This was the end of earth. 
The Corsican was not content.”— William H. Seward. 

THE WEAKNESS OF A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 

The first time Don Piatt met Wm. H. Seward was in the U. S. Senate 
with a friend who introduced him to the Senator. Seward invited them 
to dine with him the following Sunday. Piatt at that time ventured 
to remark that his “appeal to a higher law” caused excitement. “It was 
an imprudent speech,” Seward said in reply, “and I ought to have been 
more careful.” “Not,” said Piatt, “if you beheve it.” 

“My young friend,” said Seward, “we are warned to keep to ourselves 
what we do not believe. It is as well, frequently, to conceal what we do 
beheve. There is apt to be public damnation in both. We are all bound 
by tradition to the tail-end of a paper kite called a Constitution. It is 
held up by a string that one of these days, a wind, a httle stronger than 
usual, will break, and then we shall all tumble.” 

“Why, Mr. Senator,” Piatt said in some heat, “you certainly do not 
beheve that of our Constitution?” 

“I certainly do,” Seward replied, “but I generally keep it to myself. 
A written Constitution is a superstition that presupposes certain impossi¬ 
bilities. The first is that it can express all the wisdom of the past, and 
anticipate all the wants of the future. It supposes that its creatures 
were saints and sages. We have had those two classes, but never the 
two qualities united in one class. The saints were not sages, and the sages 
were not saints.” 

Piatt broke into a hot defense of the sacred instrument, to which 
Seward listened very politely, and when Piatt ended, said abruptly: 

“That is your blood; you are a Hugenot by descent, and all your 
opinions are convictions. I knew a relative of yours, once, John H. Piatt. 
He gave a large fortune to the support of the government in the War of 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


081 

1812, and in consequence died in prison, where he was held for debt. 
You see your uncle was a patriotic saint, but he was not a sage. However, 
we vdll not lose our opinions, for nothing makes a devotee so mad as to 
pull the stuffing out of his god, and we never can succeed by making 
people mad.” 

— TF?n. H. Seward, Don Piatfs 'Men Who Saved the Union,' 136-7. 


FAMOUS SAYINGS OF SEWARD 

“To maintain the slave-holding power is to subvert the Constitution.” 

— S'peaking against the admission of Texas. 

“It (slavery) must be abohshed, and you and I must do it.” 

—In the Campaign of '4-8, at Cleveland, 0. 

“A higher law than the Constitution.”— In '50 urging the admission of 
Calif, into the Union. He declared the national domain was devoted to 
liberty, not only by the constitution, but by “a higher law than the 
constitution.” 

“An irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. 

—In '58, at Rochester, N. Y. 

THURLOW WEED ON SEWARD 

Thurlow Weed himself told the following story. Me and Mr. Seward 
were riding up Broadway, N. Y. and when passing the bronze statue of 
Lincoln, in Union Square, Seward said, “Weed, if you had been faithful 
to me, I should have been there, instead of Lincoln.” 

“Seward,” replied Weed, “is it not better to be ahve with me than to 
be dead and set up in bronze?” 

— Wm. H. Seward, 'Random Recollections,'hy H. B. Stantion, 194. 
JOHN BIGELOW’S ESTIMATE OF SEWARD 

“‘The college-bred Seward was not in any proper sense of the Words a 
liberally educated man. He was licensed to practice law, but he embarked 
in politics so early in life that he never was much of a lawyer. He may 
fairly enough be said to have spent his entire adult life in pohtics, which 
though calculated to,develop a certain range of faculties very highly, 
is not apt, in our country at least, to make an entirely symmetrical man.” 

—'Retrospections of an Active Life.' Vol. 3, page, 627. 

Wm. E. Gladstone, however, said Seward’s defense of the negro Free¬ 
man, on the plea of insanity, “The greatest forensic effort in the English 
language.” 

Chas. Sumner, also said of the same case, that it was worth more for 
fame than the whole forensic life of Choate. 

And Seward said of Sumner: 

“In mind Sumner was a scholar, somewhat dilletante; at heart he was 
a reformer, ardent and resolute. He was a cultured lawyer, but his 
studies were on the theoretical side of his profession. He had been chosen 
as the best exponent of the indignation felt in Massachusetts against 
Webster’s sensitiveness to the rights claimed by slavery.” 

—1 Frederic Bancroft's Life of Seward, 298. 

SEWARD’S CHARACTERIZATION OF BUCHANAN 

“I think Buchanan has conclusively proved two things: 1st., that no 
State has the right to secede, unless it wishes to; and 2nd., that it is the 
President’s duty to enforce the laws, unless somebody opposes him.” 

—2 Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, 371. 


6^2 


• BEAT »ATING* BT GREAT LAWYER* 


NEW YORK’S GREATEST STATESMAN 

“In the heart of New York, a bronze statue of heroic size has been 
erected to the memory of New York’s greatest statesman. It will darken 
into slow decay, as his memory fades into oblivion without probably one 
of the busy millions knowing that, for four years, nothing stood between 
that great commercial center and the utter ruin of a bombardment but 
the subtle intellect and patriotic heart of that one man, without a navy, 
possessed of no coast defenses, our cities on the seas were at the mercy 
of the weakest naval power of Europe. In all this I detract nothing from 
the fame of Lincoln. Seward was a greater man in one thing, but not in 
all things, than Abraham Lincoln; and were we the enlightened people 
we claim to be, the great Secretary’s name would live along the pages of 
our history as that of one whose cultured mind, indomitable will, high 
courage, and pure patriotism, made a debt we were proud to acknowledge, 
tWs honoring ourselves in honoring him.” ^ 

—Don Piatt's ‘Men Who Saved the Union,' 170. 

SEWARD’S ACHIEVEMENTS BEFORE SECRETARY OF STATE 

“His mind and memory are impressed on many of the organic laws of 
New York that have since spread out through the Union over a continent. 
He first developed opposition to corporate monopolies, if he failed to 
restrain altogether that monstrous evil from which the whole country 
now suffers, it was no fault of his. He, among the first, favored a system 
of public education. He was the favorite of public works, such as the 
enlargement of the Erie Canal, as well as other improvements in aid of 
the cheap distribution of products. He removed the honorous disabil¬ 
ities imposed upon foreigners. The reform in courts of law, since so gener¬ 
ally copied by other States, came from him. He suggested and carried 
to success a geological survey of the State. He got a general banking 
system, and established asylums for the insane. To William H. Seward 
belongs the credit of abolishing imprisonment for debt, while he quieted 
effectually the great anit-rent war that at one time threatened the political 
and social life of the State.”— Piatt's ‘Men Who Saved the Union,' 162-3. 

SEWARD’S LIFE OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 

“Seward’s ‘Life of John Quincy Adams,’ written in 1840, I pronounce 
among the best biographies I ever read.”— 1 John W. Forney's ‘Anecdotes 
of Public Men,' 353. Over 4-0,000 copies were sold. 

“Seward said of J. Q. Adams:—“I have lost a patron, a guide, a counse¬ 
lor, a friend—one whom I loved scarcely less than the dearest relations, 
and venterated above all that was mortal among men.” 

BEN PERLEY POORE’S ESTIMATE 

“Seward had not that magnetic mind which could subordinate others, 
or the mental courage to take the helm in the hour of victory, but he 
relied upon the pecuniary operations of an unscrupulous lobby, which 
had followed him from Albany, and sought to fill its military chest with 
the spoils of the public printing and binding.” 

—2 Perley Poor's Reminiscences, 54- 

GATH’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“Seward played with the integrity of the school system to win sectarian 
votes and was betrayed by Greeley, his newspaper factor.” 

—Gath in Feb., 1898. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


633 


FOUR GREAT CRIMINAL CASES 

“His reputation was made in four great criminal cases, those of Abel F. 
Fitch, et ah, of Freeman, of Wayatt and of Van Zandt, the first named 
bringing him especially the good will of opponents of slavery. Toward 
the end of his career at the bar, however, he changed from a general 
practitioner to a patent lawyer, and as such had a lucrative practice.” 

— Ency. Brit., Art. 'Seward.* 

LETTER-BOXES AND CARRIERS DUE TO SEWARD 

We are indebted to Seward for street letter-boxes, and the first attempt 
by letter-carriers in the cities and towns. This he advocated in the Senate 
of the U. S., in 1850-1. 

THE FREEMAN MURDER CASE 

“A demented negro, named Freeman, just out of the State prison, at 
Auburn, N. Y., killed without the slightest provocation, and with revolt¬ 
ing brutality, a whole family of the neighborhood. He was arrested. 
The people roused to frenzy, were with difficulty restrained from lynching 
him. Seward was away at the time. He had recently been counsel in 
another case where the then novel and unpopular defense of insanity 
had been set up and maintained by him with some success; and it was 
feared he might be induced to act for Freeman. Threats of personal 
violence were rife, should he appear for the defense. Seward was present 
in court when the lunatic was brought in to be arraigned; he had no counsel 
and, thereupon, finding no other lawyer willing to defend him, Seward 
volunteered to appear for him. After an able defense, he was convicted. 
The insanity charge was proved beyond a doubt, but conviction, under the 
excited and prejudiced condition, was, out of the question, and he was 
found guilty. A higher court set aside the verdict, on Seward’s applica¬ 
tion, and ordered a new trial; but before a second trial took place, his 
mania so developed that it was impossible to try him again. He lived 
only a short time, and an examination desclosed an organic disease of 
the brain, from which he had long been suffering. 

This was after Seward had been Governor, in the year 1846. John 
Van Buren, attorney-general of the State, appeared for the people, and 
Samuel Blatchford, afterwards an Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme 
Court, assisted Seward. Upon the preliminary trial, to test the question, 
as to the prisoner’s sanity, Mr. Seward said:— 

“In due time, gentlemen of the jury, when I shall have paid the debt 
of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, unharmed, neglected, 
spurned! But, perhaps, years hence, when the passion and excitement 
which now agitate the community shall have passed away, some wander¬ 
ing stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over 
them an humble stone, and thereon this epitaph — 'He was faithful'.” 

STANDING AS A LAWYER 

Says Elbert Hubbard, in his Little Journeys to the Homes of American 
Statesmen, Art. “Seward:” 

“When elected Governor of New York, at the age of thirty six, Seward 
was considered one of the very first among the lawyers of the State. 
Before a court, his quiet but firm persistence along a certain line often 
dictated a verdict. The faculty of grasping a point firmly and securely, 
was his in marked measure.” 

And Mr. Justice Blatchford, adds:— 

“When elected United States Senator, Seward had one of the most 
lucrative practices in the State of New York, outside of New York City.” 

— Bancroft's 'Seward.' 182. 


634 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


DESCRIPTION AS A LAWYER 

“Seward had not the grace, the elegance of diction, the style of oratory 
of an Everett. Nor had he that sweet, melodious, musical voice that 
magnetizes and powerfully sways an audience. But his arguments were 
strong, and by them, rather than by any fictitious means, he sought to 
infiuence, and generally succeeded. He studied everything obtainable 
bearing upon the question in dispute, fortyfying Ms contention by 
pertinent precedents and decisions. It would be difficult to conceive 
of anyone being a harder student or who could, day after day, week after 
week, and month after month, be and continue to do, without any 
abatement of force and energy, so much mental labor. Going into court 
he always attracted, compelled attention. There was sometMng in his 
appearance that commanded the Mghest respect. He always impressed 
me as being a gentleman of the old school. And he was especially happy 
in briefly and strongly and naturally summing up Ms side of the case.” 
—General Frank Chamberlin, of Albany, who was' a student in 
Seward’s office in 184-8-9, written in Jan. 1898; 1 Bancroft’s Life 
of Seward, 185. 


JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE 

When Randolph was twenty-six, Patrick Henry, who had won Ms 
laurels thirty-six years before as the first orator in America, was billed 
for a speech at Charlotte Court House, in 1799, to induce the Virgima 
legislature to repeal its condemnation of the government. Randolph 
was a condidate for Congress, seeking the same that he might oppose 
Henry. The youth and fragile appearance of the untried speaker who 
had the hardihood to appear against Henry were cause for merriment 
and pity among the crowd. But they soon found that he was able to take 
care of himself. His setting forth in clear ringing tones and forcible 
language of the views of the Republican-Democrats; Ms arraignment 
of the government and Ms proclaiming the rights of the States, were so 
lucid and powerful as to astoMsh and electrify his audience, who listened 
to Mm spellbound for three hours. From that day he became a power in 
VirgiMa, and soon after in Congress. For fourteen consecutive years 
he continued to represent his district. During the first half of that period 
he was the champion and leader of his party. — The Author. 


WEBSTER ON CALIFORNIA—A PROPHECY OF 1840 

“I have been looking over some maps of California, and informing 
myself more particularly about that distant country; and, in tracing up 
the Western coast of America, my eye instinctively rested on a spot that, 
sooner or later, must become part and parcel of the United States. Do 
you know that beautiful bay of San Francisco is capable of accommodat¬ 
ing the whole naval power of the world ? 

“I know not how this will come about; I cannot see so far as that. 
I hope we shall acquire it by purchase; but one of these days we shall 
have it.”— Harvey’s "Reminiscences of Daniel Webster,’ 204 .. 




GEORGE SHARSWOOD (1810-1883), Pennsylvania 


ON READING AND STUDY 

“In the race to accomplish great things, we seem to have forgotten the 
good old maxim, festina lente (hasten slowly)—the unquestionable 
axiom that accurate knowledge of the first elements, well engrafted in 
the mind by frequent repetition, goes much farther in making a thorough 
scholar than lessons, recitations and lectures, intended to put the pupil 
in possession of everything that ever was or is known. Voluble talkers 
may be thus manufactured, but not scholars or students. They may 
fancy that they are savans, but the world soon discovers them to be 
superficial sciolists. They forget all they were taught in less time than 
it took them to acquire it, and have failed to obtain what is the most 
important of all, a love of knowledge and the art of learning as things 
ought to be learned. 

“* * * Read only few books, but understand them thoroughly. Let 
them be the standard works—the masterpieces. Study but few subjects, 
but conquer such as you do study. * * * Accurate knowledge is that which 
is truly power. It has certainty, and therefore force. It gives assurance 
and confidence to the possessor. It makes him a close, logical thinker; 
he sees clearly his way, and his course is simple, direct and onward.” 

—George Sharswood, of Penn. 

A LAWYER’S TEMPTATIONS 

“There is certainly without exception, no profession in which so many 
temptations beset the path to swerve from the line of strict integrity, 
in which so many delicate and difficult questions of duty are continually 
arising. There are pitfalls and mantraps at every step, and the mere 
youth, at the very outset of his career, needs often the prudence and self- 
denial as well as the moral courage, which belong commonly to the riper 
years. High moral principle is the only safe guide, the only torch to light 
his way amidst darkness and obstuction.”— George Sharswood. 

IMMORTALITY 

“Is it possible that a being so fearfully and wonderfully made as man, 
and animated by a spirit still more fearful and incomprehensible, was 
created for the brief term of a few revolutions of the planet he lives on? 
Shall his own physical and intellectual productions so long survive him? 
The massive piles of Egypt have endured for thousands of years; fiuted 
column and sculptured architrave have stood for generations, monuments 
of his labor and skill! A poem of Homer, an oration of Cicero, carry down 
to the remotest posterity the memorial of their names. Men found 
empires, establish constitutions, promulgate codes of laws. There have 
been Solons, Justinians, and Napoleons. There have been those justly 
called Fathers of their country and benefactors of their race. Have they, 
too, sunk to become clods of the valley ? The mind, which can look 
so far before and after—can subdue to its mastery the savages of the 
forests, and the fiercer elements of Nature—can stamp the creation of 
its genius upon the living canvas, or the almost breathing, speaking 
marble—can marshal the invisible vibrations of air into soul-stirring 
or soul-subduing music—can pour forth the eloquence of words with 
magic power to lash the passions of many hearts into a raging whirl¬ 
wind, or command them with a ‘peace, be still’—can make a book, a 
little book, which shall outlive pyramids and temples, cities and empires— 


636 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


can perceive and love beauty, and God, the infinite perfection of moral 
beauty—no, this mind can never die! Its moral progress must go on in 
an unending existence, of which its life of fourscore years on earth is 
scarce the childhood. Let us beware then of raising these objects of 
ambition, wealth, learning, honor, and influence, worthy though they be, 
into an undue importance; nor in the too ardent pursuit of what are the 
only means, lose sight of the great end of our being.” 

—George Sharswood,—‘Professional Ethics,^ pp. 180-2. 

SUGDEN ON POWERS 

“Sugden on ‘Powers’ has been said to be second to no elementary law 
book.”— Said by Judge Sharswood. 

NO ROYAL ROAD TO LAW 

n- 

“One thing is certain,—there is no royal road to law, any more than 
there is to geometry. The fruits of study cannot be gathered without 
its toil. It seems, to be the order of Providence, that there should be 
nothing really valuable in the world not gained by labor, pain, care or 
anxiety. In the law, a young man must be the architect of his own 
character as well as his own fortune.”— From, 'Advice to Lawyers.' 

READ BIOGRAPHIES OF EMINENT LAWYERS 

“It is well to read carefully and frequently the biographies of eminent 
lawyers. It is good to rise from the perusal of the studies and labors, 
the trials and conflicts, the difficulties and triumphs, of such men, in the 
actual battle of life, with a secret feeling of dissatisfaction with ourselves. 
Such a sadness in the bosom of a young student is like the tears of Thucyd¬ 
ides, when he heard Heroditus read his history of the Olympic Games, 
and received the plaudits of assembled Greece. It is the natural prelude 
to severer self-denial, to more assiduous study, to more self-sustaining 
confidence.”— ‘Legal Ethics'. 

THE COMMON LAW—A RIVER 

“The common law is not a straight canal cut by the art of civil engineers, 
but a mighty river, its head lost in the sands of antiquity, which has sought 
and made its own channel, and that the most natural and best, though 
occasionally requiring to be improved by legislative dams and embank- 
l ments.”— From Sharswood's ‘IntroductionJto Blackstone's Commentaries.' 

MORALITY IN LAW 

“There is, perhaps, no profession, after that of the sacred ministry, 
in which a high-toned morality is more imperatively necessary than that 
of the law. * * * High moral principle is the lawyer’s only safe guide; the 
only torch to fight his way amidst darkness and obstruction. It is 
like the spear of the guardian of Paradise. 

‘No falshood can endure 
Touch of celestial temper, but returns 

Of force to its own likeness’.” 

—‘Legal Ethics' 


THOS A. SHERWOOD (1834-1918), Missouri 

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMON LAW 

(After quoting Thos. Jefferson Reports, Vol. 3, Virginia Decisions 
[appendix], and the Bishop of Lincoln case [an English case,] C. B. 34, 
H. 6 fo. 38, and Prisot’s argument therein, in which Jefferson says:— 
“Thus we find this string of authorities, when examined to be the begin¬ 
ning, all hanging on the same hook; a perverted expression of Prisot’s; 
or on nothing. For they all quote Prisot, or one another, or nobody.”) 
Then says;— 

“After pepuing it, no wonder is felt that its author should say of the 
ruling therein condemned that Christianity is a part of the laws of Eng¬ 
land, is ‘the most remarkable instance of judicial legislation that has ever 
occurred in English jurisprudence, or perhaps any other. 

“To those who devoutly believe that the Pounder of the Christian 
religion is divine; a faith that has survived the wreck of empires, and the 
vortices of revolution, and continues sure and steadfast, even unto this 
day, no adventitious aids, and least of all fraudulent aids, are necessary 
to corroborate or confirm them in that faith. 

“Section 7 of Art. 2, of our Constitution prohibitorily provides ‘that 
no preference shall be given to nor any discrimination made, against, any 
church, sect or creed of religion, or, any form of religious faith or wor¬ 
ship.’ This excerpt, as well as others, which might be selected show with 
absolute conclusiveness, that a complete separation between Church and 
State has been accomplished or recognized by the religionless instrument. 

“Consequent to its terms, the State is required to occupy the position 
of an impartial arbiter, merely, giving no preference to, and making no 
discrimination against any form or expression of religious faith and pre¬ 
venting either one of a multitude of diverse faiths from interfering with^ or 
intruding upon each other, and likewise preventing them from intruding 
upon unbelievers, and vice versa. Upon this theory it is that Sunday 
laws, as commonly called, are passed and upheld. As Judge Scott very 
pertinently says in State v.' Ambs, 20 Mo. Loc. Cit. 218:—‘The Sunday 
law was not intended to compel people to go to church, or to perform 
a religious act, as an expression of preference for any particular creed 
or sect, but was designed to coerce a cessation from labor that those, 
who conscientiously believed that the day was set apart for the worship 
of God, might not be disturbed in the performance of their religious duties.' 

“The words marking the dominant thought of the above extract, 
have been italicized as a basis for further observation. Under the view 
thus expressed, the evident theory of the Sunday law is the simple pre¬ 
vention of the disturbance of those on that day, in the performance of 
their religious duties, who conscientiously believe that day was set apart 
for the worship of God. 

“The prevention and punishment of crirnes and vices by restrictive 
and punitory legislation is a conceded legislative power and function 
which may find enforcement as well on Sunday as on every other 
day in the week; but it would seem that the legislative power 
would not embrace the authority to punish for the mere playing of 
cards on Sunday, no disturbance being caused thereby to those who 
worship and keep holy that day. And especially should this view obtain 
in this State under section 5 of our Bill of Rights, which declares:— 
‘That no human authority can control or interfere with the rights of 
conscience.’ In St. L. Agr’l and Mech. Ass’n. v. Delano, 108 Mo., 217, 
it was determined that section 3854 (now sec. 2242)—which forbids 
‘horse-racing, cock-fighting, or playing at cards or games of any kind, 


(>38 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


on the first day ot the week commonly called Sunday,’ and provides that 
such person thus offending, shall be deemed 'guilty of a misdemeanor,’ 
etc., does not extend to the prohibition of mere athletic sports. And it 
was there said that ‘these prohibitions are evidently leveled against 
sports and games that have a demoralizing tendency, and do not extend 
to mere athletic sports.’ 

“The ruling in ex parte Neet, 157 Mo., 527, follows the same line of 
thought and theory in holding that baseball does not tall under the ban 
of the quoted section, for the reason heretofore given. In State v. Keller, 
53 Mo. App. 32, the validity of the statute was assumed without dis¬ 
cussion. Our statutes respecting the observance of Sunday are some¬ 
what singular, ex. gr: they punish those who hunt game or shoot on the 
first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, while others on the same 
day may imitate some of the early Apostles, and go afishing, without 
let, hindrance or punishment. (Sec. 2240.) Does not this discrimination 
between the huntsman and the fisherman, the shooter of the shot-gun 
and the shooter of the ‘short gig,’ rather seem to leSn towards a special 
law by favoring particular persons of a class? And would not the same 
rule hold under the rulings of our Supreme Court with regard to base¬ 
ball players; are they not exempted from punishment by the statute, 
notwithstan^ng the multifarious noises they make, with their bands of 
music and their vociferous shoutings, while the quiet players in the 
homes of some non-gambling game, also, make an unconstitutional dis¬ 
crimination against the cardplayer and favoring the basball player'] 

“Returning to the point already adverted to: What power does the 
Legislature possess to forbid the doing of mere indifferent or neutral 
acts ? If it be taken as true that the Christian religion is no part of the 
common law, and if it be taken as true that the Legislature has, under 
our Constitution no power to give a preference to, nor make a discrim¬ 
ination against any church, sect or creed of religion, etc., how is it possible 
for the Legislature successfully to prohibit and punish an indifferent, 
neutral or colorless act, which in its performance has no tendency to dis¬ 
turb of the religious duties of others, without overstepping the boundary 
fixed by our organic law forbidding either preference for, or discrimination 
against, any sect or creed of religion? 

“The Legislature has never yet attempted to prohibit the mere playing 
of games or cards on ireek days, so that the making of such a game, a 
crime, if played on Sunday certainly tends very strongly to give such 
prohibtion a religious aspect', and if so that it was intended to give a pre¬ 
ference to the Christian religion, seems too clear and obvious for argument; 
but such preference our Constitution forbids. Why forbid the playing 
of such a game on Sunday, which disturbs or interferes with no one who 
observes that day, except for the simple purpose of compelling respect 
for such day? What is that but upholding certain religious views, and 
giving preference thereto? It would seem that statute must possess the 
signi&ance here attributed to it, or else none at all. 

“If the Legislature may prohibit and punish a mere game of cards, on 
Sunday, then no reason is seen why they may not go further and pre¬ 
scribe what people shall or shall not wear or eat on Sunday, or whether 
they may walk out or drive about on that day. It is here with con¬ 
fidence asserted that under our Constitution, no such legislative power exists. 
But it is not believed that the Legislature intended by section 2242 
to punish the mere playing of a game of cards when unaccompanied by 
gambling incidents. Our Supreme Court, as already indicated, has 
decided that section 2242 does not apply except to game of a demoralizing 
tendency', such tendency cannot be affirmed of a mere game of cards, 
as above mentioned. Of this judicial notice will be taken. 

“Besides when games, or ‘gaming is spoken of in a statute as indict¬ 
able, it is to be regarded as convertible with gambling; i. e., staking 
money on a game involving more or less chance.’ (2 What. Crim Law,— 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


639 


9 ed.—sec. 1465b.) ‘Since in popular language, the words ‘gaming’ 
and ‘gambling’, do largely if not universally indicate an evil sport, if a 
statute makes either punishable, the evil form of it is commonly or 
always presumptively meant; the statute being construed, as legislative 
acts should be, harmoniously with its manifest purpose and intent.’ 
(Bishop, Stat. Crim. secs. 858, 860.) 

“Moreover, another test if appUed to the litigated section will lead 
to a like result as above indicated; words when associated together, 
give meaning to each other. Horse-racing and cock-fighting, especially 
if occuring on Sunday, are presumptively sports of an evil, or immoral 
nature, and ‘playing at cards,’ being associated with the former words, 
will take their legal complexion from such words, and held likewise to 
mean an evil sport, to-wit, gambhng; as Lord Bacon hath it, 'Copulatio 
verborum indicat acceptionem in eodem sensn (McNichol v. U. S. Mer¬ 
chants, Rep. Agency, 74. Mo. 463.) 

—In ^^Commentaries on the Criminal Law of Mo." pp. 827-32 — 
Written in Springfield, Mo. 1907. 

Thomas A. Sherwood, who was born June 2, 1834, at Eatonton, Georgia, 
graduated in law in 1857 at the Cincinnati, Ohio, Law School; soon after 
moved to Springfield, Missouri. Elected to the Missouri Supreme Court, 
1872, 82 and 92, where he served thirty years—a longer continuous term 
than was vouchsafed to any other judge on that bench. Moved in 1904 
to Pasadena, California, where he died Nov. 11, 1918. 


BURKE’S EULOGY ON SHERIDAN’S SPEECH IN PROSECUTION 
OF WARREN HASTINGS 

“Mr. Sheridan has this day surprised the thousands, who hung with 
rapture on his accents, by such an array of talents, such an exhibition of 
capacity, such a display of powers, as are unparalleled in the annals of 
oratory; a display that refiected the highest honor upon himself, lustre 
upon letters, renown upon parliament, glory upon the country. Of all 
species of rhetoric, of every land of eloquence that has been witnessed or 
recorded, either in ancient or modern times; whatever the acuteness of 
the bar, the dignity of the senate, the solidity of the judgment-seat, 
and the sacred morality of the pulpit have hitherto furnished; nothing 
has surpassed, nothing has equaled what we have this day heard in 
Westminster Hall. No holy rehgion, no sage, no statesman, no orator, 
no man of any literary description whatever, has come up, in the one 
instance, to the pure sentiments of morality, or in the other to that of 
variety of knowledge, force of imagination, property and vivacity of 
illusion, beauty and elegance of diction, strength and copiousness of 
style, pathos and sublimity of conception, to which we have this day 
listened with ardor and admiration. From poetry up to eloquence 
there is not a species of composition of which a complete and perfect 
specimen might not, from that single speech, be culled and collected.” 



LEMUEL SHAW (1781-1861), Massachusetts 

LAW MUST BE PRACTICED 

“Law is an art as well as a science.' Whilst it has its foundation in a 
broad and comprehensive morality, and in profound and exact science, 
to be adapted to actual use, in controlling and regulating the concerns 
of social life, it must have its artistic skill, which can only be acquired 
by habitual practice in courts of justice. A man may be a laborious stu¬ 
dent, have an inquiring and discriminating mind, and have all the ad¬ 
vantage which a library of the best books can afford, and yet without 
attendance on courts and the means and facilities which practice affords, 
he would be little prepared, either to try questions of fact or argue questions 
of law.” ^ 

He was one of the greatest judges America has produced. Leaving 
a practice of $20,000 a year, after 26 years’ practice, he was appointed 
by Governor Lincoln, at the request of Daniel Webster, Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, which position he held for 30 
years. “No subject was so great as to be beyond the reach of his 
comprehensive grasp; no distinction so minute as to elude his discrimi¬ 
nating observation,” said Judge Bigelow. 

SHAW AND PARSONS, APPOINTED FROM BAR 

“Judge Shaw and Judge Parsons were the only Chief Justices of Mas¬ 
sachusetts, from the Revolution to the present, appointed directly from the 
bar.”— Jos. Henry Beale, Jr’s ^Lemuel Shaw,’ —3 Gt. Am. Lawyers, ^17. 

SHAW’S OBJECTIONS TO SERVICE AS CHIEF JUSTICE OF 

MASSACHUSETTS 

“Whether I shall accept the appointment as Judge: 

“Against it:— 

“I shall in some measure sacrifice ease and independence; it will be 
more laborious. I shall lose something in part of present emolument. 
I shall be more absent from my family at a time when my children might 
benefit by my presence. I shall miss the opportunity of traveling, of mak¬ 
ing tours and journeys, and be confined to the pale of the commonwealth. 

“In favor:— 

“Although I shall have a good deal of labor I’do not know that it is 
more irksome—in many respects it is less so — than that of the bar. 
There will be considerable intervals of leisure. Although the emolument 
will not be so great as that which I have been receiving, yet it is more 
regular, permanent and secure. At fifty, the labors of the bar begin 
to become irksome, and many a man who has in early life enjoyed a 
full practice is apt to decline after that period. The situation is a highly 
honorable and useful one, which, if the duties of it are ably and accept¬ 
ably discharged, will lay the foundation of an honorable, lasting name. 
The above ‘if’ is with me the great cause of apprehension and alarm. 
Upon this, I confess I am infiuenced more by the judgment of others than 
by my own. I am conscious that I cannot thus discharge the duties; they 
assme me that I can. I have only one consolation, that I have often 
thought the same in regard to other arduous undertakings, and yet upon 
trial have found my strength equal to the occasion. If I undertake this 
great office, God grant it may be so here.” 

— Jos. Henry Beale, Jr’s ^Lemuel Shaw’, 3 Gt. Am. Lawyers, ^70-1. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


641 


CHIEF JUSTICE BIGELOW’S TRIBUTE 

“It was not learning, or study, or research which especially distinguished 
him (Shaw) as judge. Others have possessed these qualities to an equal 
degree. His pre-eminence was mainly due to his initiative and compre¬ 
hensive knowledge and appreciation of those great unchangeable principles 
of justice and right which lie at the foundation and form the basis of the 
common law.” 

(Bigelow was Shaw’s predecessor on the Supreme Bench of Massa¬ 
chusetts). 

CHIEF JUSTICE SHAW ON CHOATE 

“In the case of Mr. Choate, it was considered quite indispensable 
that he should reside in Cambridge, ou account of the influence which his 
genial manners, his habitual presence, and the force of his character, 
would be likely to exert over the young men, drawn from every part of 
the United States to listen to his instructions.” 

—Said by Shaw, as member of the Corporate Board of Harvard, 
in 18J^7, in urging Mr. Choate as the successor to Judge Jos. Story, 
as Professor of Law in the Harvard Law School. 

PURCHAS’ PILGRIMS 

When Judge Shaw on behalf of Harvard College took possession of 
Mr. Dowse’s hbrary, at Cambridgeport, which was presented by Mr. 
Dowse, the latter handed him a book which happened to be ‘Purchas’ 
Pilgrims.’ 

“Ah,” said the Chief Justice, “Now, Mr. Dowse, we have this not by 
gift but by purchase (Purchas).” 

— Willard's 'Half Century ivith Judges and Lawyers,' 132. 

KNEW NOTHING ABOUT THE CASE 

Chief Justice Shaw was one day calling the docket, and came to a 
case in which Major Cobb appeared. The Major was busy talking 
with some one and the Chief Justice said— 

“Mr. Cobb, what shall be done with your case?” 

“I beg your pardon,” said Cobb, “but the name of the case escaped 
me.” 

The Chief Justice called the name of the case again. 

Cobb: “My name may appear there, your Honor, but really I don’t 
know anything about the case. 

Shaw: “I didn’t suppose you knew anything about the case; I only 
asked you what you would have done with it.” 

— Willard's 'Half Century,' etc., 131. 

WANTED QUIET 

The Chief Justice upon opening Court liked to have quiet reign, and 
everybody seated, when he would proceed to business, always calling 
the docket himself. The Crier had a mumbling voice, so that a person 
could scarcely tell when he ended his proclamation. Mr. D. A. Simmons, 
a lawyer, who was very implusive, rushed up one morning, rather short 
of breath, before the Crier had finished his proclamation, and said: 

“Please, your Honor, I wish-to make-a motion-er-er-to amend er-er-the 
case of er-er.” 

“There is one amendment you can make without a motion,” said 
the CWef Justice, “your manners. Sir.” — Willard's Half Century, etc., 130. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


()42 

BEN BUTLER AND JUDGE SHAW 

A ease was called by Judge Shaw, in which General Butler appeared 
for plaintiff. 

“Does anyone answer for the plaintiff?” said the Chief Justice. No 
one answered. 

“Call the plaintiff.” said the Chief Justice. As the Crier began calling, 
Mr. Butler, who had been quietly sitting in the Court-roorn, said: 

“May it please your Honor, I think this case is not in a condition to 
be thus summarily disposed of.” 

“Why not. Sir,” said the Chief Justice. 

Mr. Butler: “I argued the case a year and a half ago before your 
Honor, and have been waiting for an opinion.” 

Chief Justice: “Pass it, Mr. Clerk.”— Willard's ^Half-Century,' etc. 131. 

RUFUS CHOATE’S REVERENCE FOR SHAW 

C 

“Stevenson, the sculptor,” says Matt. H. Carpenter, in a letter to Hon. 
J. Neilson, author of the memoirs of Rufus Choate, “told me that while 
he was engaged in carving a lion of exaggerated size, and engaged on the 
head and mane, Mr. Choate took the liveliest interest in the work, 
calling every morning as he came down, and every evening on his way 
home, to mark his progress. Stevenson, being curious, asked Mr. Choate 
why that work interested him so much, “Why,” said Choate, “that is the 
best likeness of Chief Justice Shaw that I ever saw.” 

— Neilson's Memoirs of Rufus Choate, 297. 

BEN BUTLER FEARED SHAW AND GOD ALMIGHTY 

It is said General Benj. F. Butler once declared:— 

“There are only two individuals in the world that I fear—one is 
Chief Justice Shaw, and the other, God Almighty.” 

—^Leading in Law and Curious in Court,' Sec. 183, by Benj. F. 

Burnham., (1896). 

BUTLER’S OPINION OF SHAW 

“Lemuel Shaw was the most learned and the ablest Judge in the State 
of Massachusetts.”— Butler's Book, 1001. 

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS’ ESTIMATE 

“It has been my fortune, in the course of professional life of more than 
forty years, to practice before some very distinguished judges. But I 
cannot mention the name of Chief Justice Shaw without saying that, 
in all the qualities which make a great magistrate—in strength of in¬ 
tellect, in depth of mental vision, in comprehensive grasp of every question, 
however difficult, that came before him, in application to it of the appro¬ 
priate learning, and in the unquestioned and unquestionable poise in 
which he held the scales of Justice, until one or the other ought to pre¬ 
dominate, I have known no man who was his superior. Chief Justice 
Marshall I never saw; Chancellor Kent, I never saw upon the bench, 
although I once met him in private life. But, when I name Taney, Story, 
Nelson, and Curtis, as among the judges before whom it has been more 
or less my lot to appear, and recall many others of deserved distinction 
in different States, of w'hom I have had personal observation, it will, 
perhaps, be allowed that my estimate of Shaw as a judge, unimportant 
as it is to his fame, has not been formed without sufficient opportunities 
of comparison with men of note and mark. There have doubtless been 
judges who would be called more learned, or possessed more learning 


GRP;AT SAYIAGJS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


643 


in special departments of the law; but no one ever knew Chief Justice 
Shaw to fail in the knowledge and application of whatever law was nec¬ 
essary to the decision of the cause on which he had to act. It is true 
that he was aided by a learned bar, whose presentation of their cases was 
habitually thorough. But after all has been done that learned advocates 
can do, it is the office of the judge to select, to weigh, to compare, and not 
unfrequently, before the law can be declared, to make researches which 
counsel have not made, or to draw distinctions which they have not 
drawn. The opinions of this eminent person have always been received 
by the Courts of other States of this Union, and in the Federal Courts, 
with a respect that have not been less than phenomnal, and that have 
not been accorded to those of any judge who has held a place in the judicial 
history of any part of the country.” 

—1 R. B. Curtis’ Memoirs, note by Geo. T. Curtis. 69. 

WEBSTER ON SHAW’S HEALTH AND WORK 

“Judge Shaw can do the work of ten, and at night eat ham enough 
to raise the market price at Cincinnati.” 

— Willard’s ^Half Century,’ etc. 13^. 

THE OFFICER ONLY “CALLED” 

A distinguished man died, and the adjutant-general ordered out a 
certain regiment. The colonel called the men to their quarters to parade 
on the occasion, and procured a band. The leader could not get has pay, 
and Mr. Cobb brought suit against the colonel. After Major Cobb had 
opened his case, the Chief Justice said:— 

“Mr. Cobb, how can this action be maintained?” 

“On the ground that he who danced must pay the fiddler.” 

“Who danced here, sir; colonel?” 

“Oh no, sir, he only called.”— ‘.Half Century,’ etc., by Willard, 135. 
AN IMITATOR OF CHOATE 

Many years ago a young man who was quite ambitious to display his 
oratorical powers, endeavored to imitate Choate, argued a case before 
Judge Shaw. He had in one hand the statutes, while the other was 
behind his back, underneath the skirts of his coat. In this position, he 
shouted among other bursts of eloquence:—“Look at the statutes, 
your Honor, look at the statutes.” “Look at them yourself, sir,” was the 
gruff reply of the Chief Justice.— Willard’s ^Half Century,’ etc., 136. 

SHAW’S IDEAL LAWYER 

“It is not the profession that adorns the man, but the man the pro¬ 
fession.” 

LITERATURE 

“Literature, in my opinion, is almost the only resort of a man who 
wishes to render his employments independent of others.” 

—Said by Shaw, soon after leaving college. 

HIS CLASSMATES AT COLLEGE 

Shaw entered Harvard, in the fall of 1796, and was of the class of 1800, 
in which were Washington Allston, of South Carohna; Joseph S. Buck¬ 
minster, the epileptic young Boston preacher; Joshua Bates, afterwards 
President of Middlebury College, Vt., and Loammi Baldwin, an engineer 


644 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


of ability whose monuments are found at Charlestown, Massachusetts, 
and Norfolk, Va., and whose name is perpetuated by discovering the 
‘Baldwin’ apple. In his second college year, Shaw taught school for 
$16.00 per month and board.— F. H. Chase s Life of Shaw, 18-20. 

ASSISTANT EDITOR OF “GAZETTE” 

Shaw assisted his uncle. Dr. Hayward, a minister at Barnstable, and 
the latter persuaded him to become a lawyer. David Everett, a young 
lawyer assisted on the Gazette, and wrote:— 

“You’d scarce expect one of my age 
To speak in public on the stage, 

And if I chance to fall below 
Demosthenes or Cicero, 

Don’t view me vith a critic’s eye, ( . 

But pass my imperfections by.” 

(Everett wrote several plays, and finally moved to Marietta, O., 
where he died in 1813. Thos. O. Selfridge, an older lawyer, in whose 
office Everett practiced, was also a contributor to the “Gazette”. Self¬ 
ridge was afterwards charged with murder, and defended by Samuel 
Dexter with great ability.)— Life, 36. 

SEVEN YEARS APPRENTICESHIP IN LAW 

It took seven years before one could be admitted to full practice of the 
law, in Shaw’s youth. 

MAJOR MELVILLE—THE ORIGINAL OF “LAST LEAF” 

Major Melville, of the Boston “Tea-Party,” of 1774, is the original of 
O. W. Holmes’s “Last Leaf.” He was a leader of the Continental Army, 
and later surveyor of the port of Boston. He persisted until his death 
in 1832 in wearing the old-fashioned hat and knee-breeches, and was 
called,—“the last of the cocked hats.” He inspired Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 
poem,—“The Last Leaf,” and the author said of him: 

“His aspect among the crowds of a later generation reminded me of 
a withered leaf which has held to its stem through the storms of autumn 
and winter, and finds itself still clinging to its bough while the new 
growths of spring are bursting their buds and spreading their foliage 
all around it,” and so he wrote: 

“I know it is a sin for me to sit and grin at him here: 

But the old three-cornered hat and the breeches, and all that 
are so queer!” 

Shaw was engaged to Melville’s daughter, Nancy, whom he never 
married because of her untimely death; but Shaw did not marry until 
thirty-seven. The Melville family and his were again united by the 
marriage of Shaw’s daughter Elizabeth to Herman Mellville, a grandson 
of the Major, in 1847.— F. H. Chase's Life of Shaw, lt.7-6. 

JUDGE JAMES PRESCOTT’S IMPEACHMENT 

Judge Prescott was judge of Probate for the County of Middlesex, and 
was charged with fifteen acts of misconduct, extending over as many 
years. It was alleged in several instances, that he held court in his 
law-office; that he had demanded and received fees greater than those 
allowed by statute. In other instances, he was charged with acting 
as counsel in matters likely to come before him as judge, and with giving 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


G45 


advice to litigants in cases pending in his court, receiving fees or pay for 
his services, and afterwards allowing his fees, in the account of the 
executor to whom the advice was given. 

Prescott answered, practically admitting all the facts set forth in the 
articles. But justified the same. The impeachment was before the 
Senate, the upper branch of the Massachusetts legislature. Shaw was 
appointed one of the managers to conduct the case. Daniel Webster 
and Hoar appeared as senior counsel for Judge Prescott. The trial began 
on Apr, 17, 1821, in Boston. There was little contest over the facts. 
Respondent’s main defense, was ins claim that the fees were for services 
of the court, for which no amount was established by law, for which, 
therefore, it was proper to receive reasonable compensation. In support 
they sought to show that such a custom prevailed in the other counties 
of the State, was in existence when Judge Prescott took office, and had 
been followed by him in good faith. Shaw objected to this testimony, 
contending that other similar wrongs could not make Judge Prescott’s 
acts right, and that the only question was whether the fees taken were 
illegal. Webster replied that, although this might be so in an action to 
recover the fees, yet the articles of impeachment charged moral turpitude 
and corrupt motives, and it was clearly competent, to rebut that charge 
by showing what the practice had been. He cited cases from the Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts, the impeachment cases of Judge Chase, Warren 
Hastings, Lord Melville, and Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, in support. 
The Senate barred the inquiry, deciding the question by a silent vote^ 
This brought upon them the thunder of Webster’s wrath. Webster’s 
argument that it was more troublesome and laborious for Prescott to 
perform private duties at his office than in ordinary court, and thus an 
extra fee for that service was warranted, Shaw met this as follows:— 

“Where is the doctrine to stop, and to what corruption and abuses 
would it not lead! A judge possesses large discretionary powers, in other 
cases, to which, if correct, the same reasoning would apply. He may 
adjourn at such time as he thinks expedient. Supposing the first day 
after opening court, in a remote part of the county, where there is a 
press of business, he should think fit to adjourn, on the ground that his 
private business required his attention. Might he lawfully receive 
a large sum of money of the suitors, to induce him to exercise his dis¬ 
cretionary power and continue his court? In short, if business of the 
special courts, is to be paid for liberally, and upon a scale of what the 
judge might think reasonable for extra time and attention, and business 
at regular courts of probate is paid for according to the humble standard 
of the fee-bill, would it not soon be in the power of the judge to render the 
transacted business in the latter courts, without regard to the enhanced 
expense? If a judge of probate may sell his discretion, and turn his 
judicial power to profit, why may not the same thing be done by the 
judges of common law courts? It is no answer to say that they are paid 
by salaries, and not by fees. They are bound to do their duty, and they 
have an equal right to say that they will do no more without compensation. 
They, too, have large discretionary powers, and by adjournment may 
hold sessions at such times and places as the public good requires. Sup¬ 
pose an individual suitor, having an importnat cause, depending upon the 
decision of a question of law before the judges of the Supreme Court, 
should pay them a fee to induce them to hold an extraordinary session 
for his accomodation. It would be no apology to say that such individual 
could well afford to pay the extra sum, that in fact, it would be for his 
advantage to pay it, rather than wait the delay of the oridinary course 
of business. Such a transaction, it is quite manifest, would fix a stigma 
upon the administration of justice, and the most assiduous discharge 
of official duty, could not obliterate it. 

“We have no earnest invocation to make to the Judges of this honorable 
Court, except that they will examine the case now submitted to them. 


64G 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


without fear, favor, affection, prejudice or partiality, and pronounce 
their decision, not according to the momentary impulses of sympathy 
and compassion, but upon the invariable dictates of judgment and 
reason. 

“If sensibility should usurp the seat of justice, and take the place of 
the understanding and judgment, laws would be unavailing, and all civil 
and social rights become fluctuating and uncertain. Justice might throw 
away her balance, for it would be useless, and her sword, for it would 
be mischievous. If punishment and disgrace are to overtake the respon¬ 
dent, it is because punishment and disgrace are the natural, the necessary 
and the inevitable consequences of turpitude and crime. The Represent¬ 
atives of the people of this Commonwealth, demand at your hands no 
sacrifice of innocence; they ask for no victim of their resentment, for they 
have none to gratify. If applying the evidence to the law of this case, 
this Court can consistently with the conclusions of enlightened and 
inflexible judgment, pronounce the respondent innocent, these repre¬ 
sentatives will rejoice to find that the reputation of this Commonwealth 
still remains pure and unspotted. But if these conclusions should be 
otherwise, if this Court is satisfied that the respondent has abused the 
powers entrusted to him, disregarded the rights of others, and violated 
his high official duties, the representatives of the people do earnestly 
hope, and confidently trust, that this high Court, disregarding all conse¬ 
quences personal to the respondent, will pronounce such judgment on 
his conduct as will prove a salutary example to all others in authority, 
vindicate the honor and secure the rights of this Commonwealth, and 
enable them to transmit to posterity that unblemished reputation for 
purity, honesty and integrity in the administration of justice which has 
hitherto been the ornament and glory of Massachusetts.” 

—Judge Prescott was convicted upon two of the articles of impeach¬ 
ment, and he was removed from office. Shaw’s Life, pp. Jf.6 and 100-2. 

A REASONABLE DOUBT 

“Then, what is a reasonable doubt? It is a term often used, probably 
pretty well understood, but not easily defined. It is not a mere possible 
doubt; because everything relating to human affairs and depending on 
moral evidence is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. It is that 
state of the case, which, after the entire comparison and consideration 
of all the evidence, leaves the minds of the jurors in that condition that 
they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, 
of the truth of the charge. The burden of the proof is on the prosecutor. 
All the presumptions of law, independent of evidence, are in favor of 
innocence; and every person is presumed to be innocent until he is proved 
guilty. If upon such proof there be reasonable doubt remaining, the 
accused is entitled to the benefit of it by an acquittal. For it is not 
sufficient to establish a probability, though a strong one arising from the 
doctrine of chances, that the fact charged is more likely to be true than 
the contrary; but the evidence must establish the truth of the fact to 
a reasonable and moral certainty; a certainty that convinces and directs 
the understanding, and satisfies the reason and judgment, of those who 
are bound to act conscientiously upon it. This we take to be proof 
beyond reasonable doubt; because if the law should go further than this, 
and require absolute certainly, as it mostly depends upon considerations 
of a moral nature, it would exclude circumstantial evidence altogether.” 

—Charge in Prof. Webster’s case, for murder. Life of Shaw, 202. 

Case was tried in Boston, 1850. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


647 


THERON METCALF 

Theron Metcalf was a student of a meticulous character, involving 
painstaking research and comparison rather than anything in the nature 
of constructive work or interpretation. Metcalf was appointed with 
Prof. Asabel Sterns, of the Harvard Law School and Shaw, commissioners 
in 1822, to revise and superintend the publication of the laws. Metcalf 
was the editor of English reports and numerous text-books, a frequent 
contributor to legal publications, and later published an important work 
on Contracts, and became a reporter in 1835 of the decisions of the 
Massachusetts Supreme Court; later he was appointed as Associate 
Justice of the bench with Judge Shaw’, where he served for seventeen 
years.— Shaio's Life, 108-9. 


GEO. S. HILLARD’S RETORT 

“When it was proposed by Benj. P. Butler, to legislate Judge Shaw off 
the bench, in 1853, because the judge was severe in dealings with counsel. 
This action took place in the Constitutional Convention. Hillard in 
commending Judge Shaw, and alluding to the actions of Butler and his 
followers, said: 

“While we have jackals and hyeans at the bar, we want the old lion 
upon the bench, that with one blow of his huge paw can pull thier scalps 
over their eyes.” 

Butler was no favorite with the court, as he was well aware, although 
he claimed to bear the Judge no ill will, as he says in his book, that Shaw 
was the most learned and the ablest judge in the State, and was of the 
finest qualities of heart and head.— Shaw\‘i Life, 283. 

RUFUS CHOATE’S TRIBUTE TO SHAW 

“Do not reply hastily,” said Choate to his associate in a trial at Spring- 
field, Mass., who was about to reply in anger to a suggestion of the Chief 
Justice. “Remember that with him, and under him, life, liberty and 
property are safe.” At another time, when looking at a portrait of Sir 
Matthew Hale, Choate remarked: “A very great judge. Hale was but 
not greater, I think, than the Chief.”— Shaw’s Life, 289. 

SHAW ON OUR DEBT TO ENGLAND 

“The commercial and intellectual intercourse, which, with liberal 
views, we maintain with England, may be of the inost beneficial and 
interesting nature arising from the community of origin and language. 
rVoih her we have derived our laws, learning, taste, literature and science, 
our principles of government and our love of hberty.”— Life of Shaw, 210. 

AGAINST A HIGH TARIFF 

“It is an abuse of the power of Congress to impose duties for revenue, 
when it is carried to such extremes as to prohibit imports, and con¬ 
sequently lessen our export trade, destroy revenue, burden one part of 
the nation with heavy'taxes for the benefit of another, which we claim 
constitutes the wrong, and which we contend is neither in accordance 
with the spirit nor letter of a constitution which was intended to guarantee 
equal rights, as well as equal burdens to all who live under it.” 

—Said by Judge Shaw, in a memorial to Congress, in 1828. 

“No more powerful statement,” said Geo. F. Hoar, “of the argument 
against Mgh protection can be found.” 


648 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


COMMONWEALTH VS. AVES 

In this ease, decided in 1836, Judge Shaw freed by habeas corpus a 
colored girl named Med who had been .brought to Massachusetts by her 
mistress, who was visiting relatives in the North. When she was about 
to return to the South, taking with her the slave, the process of the court 
was invoked to determine the girl’s status under the laws of the State. 
Shaw’s decision was based upon the grounds that slavery was contrary 
to natural right and could not exist in Massachusetts. He held that 
‘an owner of a slave in another State where slavery is warranted by law, 
voluntarily bringing such slave into this State, had no authority to detain 
him against his will, or to carry him out of the State against his consent, 
for the purpose of being held in slavery.” In this case Rufus Choate 
and Ellis G. Loring appeared as counsel for the Commonwealth, and 
C. P. Curtis and Benj. R. Curtis argued that the right of property in 
the colored girl had been lost. The latter, Curtis, was later appointed a 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the U. S., in 1851, and there delivered 
his famous dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case. In that opinion 
Judge Curtis cites and follows the opinion in Commonwealth vs. Aves. 
Over the opinion in the Dred Scott case, arose the controversy between 
Chief Justice Taney and Justice Curtis, which probably helped to influence 
the latter soon afterwards to resign from the bench. After the opinion of 
the Chief Justice had been read in consultation and in open court. Judge 
Curtis prepared and read his dissenting opinion, and subsequently 
permitted it to be published. The Chief Justice, however, contrary to 
the rules of his court, did not file his opinion with the Clerk, but withheld 
it, and made material additions thereto, so Curtis claimed. The Clerk 
received orders from the Chief Justice that nobody should receive a 
copy of the opinion, which was subsequently filed, until it was published 
by the Reporter. The Clerk, following this order, refused to send a 
copy of the Chief Justice’s opinion to Curtis upon his request. Then 
ensued a lengthy and increasingly bitter correspondence between the 
colleagues. These letters are set forth, in full, in George Ticknor Curtis’ 
Memoir of Benj. R. Curtis.— Life of Shaw, 161^-5. 


BUTLER FEARED SHAW AND GOD ALMIGHTY 

It is said General Benjamin F. Butler once declared: “There are only 
two individuals in the world that I fear, one is Chief Justice Shaw and the 
other is God Almighty.” 

Butler was asked once where he was taking an immense mastiff which 
he had in leash. “Down to the Supreme Court,” was the reply. “I 
thought I would show him the Chief Justice so as to teach him how to 
growl.” 

In the Constitutional Convention of 1853, Butler in his attack upon 
the Chief Justice, spoke of his severity in dealing with counsel. George 
S. Hillard, a brilliant and accomplished lawyer, met the criticism with 
this retort: “While we have jackals and hyenas at the bar, we want 
the old lion on the bench, with one blow of his huge paw to bring their 
scalps over their eyes.”— F. H. Chase's 'Lemuel Shaw,’ 283. 


LESLIE M. SHAW (1848- ), Iowa 


PREPAREDNESS 

“Shall the United States encourage its business to extend lo other 
countries, particularly those in South America; and when war comes 
ask American traders to come home and leave the industries they have 
built to be taken without resistance by a foe? There isn’t a business man 
in the country who will not say no to that proposition. Yet, to avoid 
doing that very thing we must have an army and a navy adequate to 
defend our interests over the entire earth. 

“If I had my way, and there were nothing to hinder me, I would 
build the most powerful navy in the world and would mobilize a standing 
army of a million men, all in the next six months. Then we would be 
secure. Not only that, but so equipped the U. S. could prepare terms 
of peace and have them signed by all the European belligerents. 

“Were we powerful on the sea and possessed a great army we could 
simply say to England, ‘Here are peace terms; Sign on that dotted line, 
please.’ We could say the same to Germany, and to Prance and Austria 
As we are, we can suggest only to the belligerents, as to fighting boys, 
‘It is wicked to fight.’ God never intended the U. S. should be a little 
power, whose influence should be restricted to its own territory. The 
U. S. will be a great influence in the politics of the world, but to attain 
that it must have the force on land and sea to make its voice heard and 
carry weight.” 

—Leslie M. Shaw, Iowa {184-8- ), Governor of Iowa, 1908-1912; 

Sec. of Treasurer under Theo. Roosevelt, 1902-1907. 


Wm. M. EVART’S tribute to HERBERT SPENCER 

“In theology, in psychology, in natural science, in the knowledge of 
man and his exposition, and in a knowledge of the world, in the proper 
sense of society, which makes the world; the world worth knowing, the 
world worth speaking of, the world worth planning for, the world worth 
working for, we acknowledge your labors, Mr. Spencer, as surpassing 
those of any of our kind. * * * The faculty of laying on a dissecting 

board an entire nation or an entire age and finding out all the arteries and 
veins and pulsations of their life is an extension beyond any that our 
medical schools afford. You give us that knowledge of man which is 
practical and useful and whatever the claims of the doctrine may be 
about your system or the system of those who agree with you, and 
however it may be compared with other competing systems that have 
preceded it, we*^ must all agree that it is practical, that it is benevolent, 
that it is serious, and that it is reverent; that it aims at the highest 
results in virtue; that it treats evil, not as eternal, but as evenescent, and 
that expects to arrive at what is sought through the aid of the millennium, 
that condition of affairs in which there is the highest morality and the 
greatest happiness. And if we can come to that by these processes and 
these instructions, it matters little to the race whether it be called scien¬ 
tific morality or mathematical freedom or by another less pretentious 
name.” 

— Wm. M. Evaris, at Dinner given Herbert Spencer, i)t N. F. City, 
Nov. 9, 1882, before his return to England. 



SAMUEL SHELLABARGER (1817-1896), District 
of Columbia 


THE JUDICIARY OP A COUNTRY 

“The character of a judiciary of a country is so obviously the reflection 
of the character of its civilization that we utter mere truisms when we 
say that the greatness of every State is measured by the learning and 
purity of its judiciary; and that the happiness, the liberty and the virtue 
of every people are best studied in its courts. In these sanctuaries of the 
law it is that, even in decaying states, liberty and order take their last 
refuge, and here die.”— Remarks in the U. S. Supreme Court, upon the 
death of Chief Justice Wait, 1888. 

CHIEF JUSTICE HOLT 

“Soon after Coke, came one who fills, by reason of his mere judicial 
character and work, the largest space in the history of the English 
law that is occupied by any of England’s illustrious judges. He is one 
who gave England a new and a real civilization. This was Chief Justice 
Holt. Of him it is truly said that he gave splendor to all the after-coming 
luminaries of the English bench, and that he is the model upon which, in 
England, great judicial character has been formed for the last and best 
two hundred years of English history.”— In same address. 

Concerning Shellabarger’s speech in the 37th Congress on the lawfulness 
of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus by Mr. Lincoln, in the 
absence of Congressional authority, Jas. G. Blaine says: “For conciseness, 
consistency and strength it has rarely, if ever, been surpassed. It may 
be doubted whether any speech in the House ever made a more enduring 
impression, or exerted greater convincing power upon the minds of those 
to whom it was addressed.” 


INCIDENTS IN O’CONNELL’S LIFE 

He was but half an inch under six feet in height; mouth and lower 
part of his face beautifully shaped; nose was short; eyes keen blue; was 
habitually careless about money, $250,000 were subscribed for him in 
1829, after his passing of the Emancipation Act; by will he directed that 
his heart should be removed from his body (he died in Genoa, Italy, on 
his way to Rome) and be buried at Rome; fell desperately in love, just 
before his imprisonment, though nearly seventy years of age, with a 
girl hardly out of her teens, an English woman and a Protestant, who 
persistently refused to marry him; for twenty-five years of his life, rose 
soon after four, lighted his own fire, and was always seated at business 
at five, and retired invariably at 9:45; his favorite sport was hare-hunting 
with beagles among the hills, and his pack was famous all over Ireland; 
had a superb voice, full as a bell, of wide compass and great power. 

— Author. 



ELLIOT F. SHEPARD, New York 

RULES OF LEGAL SUCCESS 

“To attain eminence as a lawyer it is necessary to; 

“1. Get a thorough education. 

“2. Follow this after graduating from college by continued study, 
especially in constitutional law. 

“3. Become familiar with the practice and procedure of the courts. 

“4. In giving advice to clients a lawyer should always put himself in the 
place of his chent and then ask, What should I, A. B., do in such a case? 
And whatever he sees to be for the interest of himself in such a case, that 
is the codrse he should advise his client to pursue. 

“5. Never make or oppose a motion simply for the purpose of getting 
costs. 

“6. Cultivate clear enunciation in speaking and the habit of thinking 
on the feet. Put a vein of good humor constantly through aU arguments, 
all examinations and cross-examinations of witnesses and every summing 
up. The law is a sedate mistress and loves to be tickled, and whenever 
a lawyer can get the old lady to laugh he is sure of having won his case. 

“7. The lawyer’s meditative moments should be given to the contem¬ 
plation of the vast interests that are dependent upon the law for their 
protection, and all the methods by which that protection can be most 
effectively rendered. 

“8. The lawyer’s clientele is the whole country; not merely the partic¬ 
ular client in a particular case, or any chent in any case or his clients in 
all his cases. It is impossible for a lawyer to stand for an interest, affect¬ 
ing almost everybody in the community at large, and every lawyer 
ought to argue every case as if feeling the responsitility of this greater 
clientage wMcli his arguments continually affect and make either worse 
or better. 

“9. The lawyer ought to consider his argument in advance, and put 
liimself in the place of the judge, and honestly say to himself what 
considerations ought to operate in my mind if I were judge, for deciding 
this case in my favor. And then he should chiefly enforce before the judge 
those very considerations. So the lawyer has to put himself in the case 
of the other men twice over—once in the place of his client and once in 
the place of the judge; and by this expansion of his habit of thought he 
will grow to such a condition that he will almost invariably bring the judge 
and his client to stand upon the same platform of principles, thus securing 
a favorable decision for his chent and the confidence of the judge. 

‘TO. A lawyer who will practice upon these principles may occasionally 
lose a case, but will never lose a client; and the number of his clients will 
constantly increase and the importance of the interests intrusted to him 
constantly grow.” 


MORRIS SHEPPARD (1875- ), Texas 


CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE HEBREW TO HUMAN 
ADVANCEMENT 

“Never have the versatility and value of the Hebraic genius been rnore 
brilliantly demonstrated than in the last one hundred years. In politics 
we find Lasalle breathing German social democracy into existence and 
rivalling Bismarck. We find Lasker, the author-statesman, inaugurating 
the German Liberal party and leading it in the Reichstag. We find 
Bamberger the economist-historian, assisting in the formation of modern 
Germany. We find Mannheimer, president of the Austrian Diet, and 
Trier, the speaker of the Danish House of Commons. In Turkey we 
find Pasha, a vice-admiral of the Imperial Navy, and his brother the 
First Dragoman of the Imperial Palace. In Italy we find Maurogonato 
among the foremost senators and lawyers; Luzzati, a conspicuous member 
of various cabinets; Wollemborg, Victor Emanuel’s first minister of 
finance; Artom, the illustrious diplomat, the friend and counselor of 
Cavour. In Prance we find Benavrides, one of the highest magistrates; 
Cremieux, a famous minister and legislator; Fouled four times a minister 
of finance under Louis Napoleon; Gambetta, a defender of human rights; 
See, a champion of woman’s education. In England we find Disraeli 
rising from the humblest smroundings to become for twenty-five years 
one of the most powerful figmes of the world, and Lord Herschell, twice 
Lord High Chancellor, under Galdstone. In the United States, we find 
Judah P. Benjamin, declining a Supreme Judgeship, on account of his 
immense private practice, representing Louisiana with rare ability in 
the federal Senate, serving in the cabinet of the Confederacy, and after 
the failure of the Southern Cause reaching England, with shattered 
fortune, at the age of fifty-one, to become a leader of the English bar 
and to write a work on the law of sales that ranks as permanent 
authority. Benjamin once appeared against Webster in the United 
States Supreme Court; Webster occupied three hours. Then came 
Benjamin, physically small and insignificant, who spoke in a thin, low 
voice for twenty minutes, when the Chief Justice whispered to one of 
his colleagues: ‘Great heavens, that little man has stated Webster out 
of court in twenty minutes!’ We find Isador Rayner, the worthy 
successor of Benjamin, in the present U. S. Senate. In the National House 
of Representatives we find our own Goldfogle, Meyer, Littauer and 
Kahn. We find Franklin Moses, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
California, and Newberger, Cohen, Leventritt, Greenbaum, Steckler, 
and others on the bench in New York. In other avenues we find the 
modern Jew pre-eminent. 

“In poetry, we may point to Drachmann, whom competent critics 
have ranked with Tennyson and Bj^on; in fiction to Arbach, to Burn- 
stein, and to Zangwill; in dramatic hteratme to Klein, Milland, Halevy, 
Schlesinger, Von Weilen, Rosenfield, Belasco and Martha Morton; in 
dramatic art to Sonmenthal, the idol of Vienna, to Barney Braham, 
Rachel and to Bernhardt, the ‘queen of attitude;’ in song to Lucca, Calve, 
Lehman, Melba, Patti, Sembrich and Marcella; in music to Mendelssohn, 
grandson of the great philosopher, Meyerbeer, Strauss, the Damrosches, 
Rubenstein, and Hoffman; in painting to Israels, Solomon J. Solomon, 
Ulmann, Meyerheim, Lazaurs and Ben Austrian; in Sculpture to Ezekiel 
and Autokalski; in writers of history to Edersheim, Herzberg, Rowanin 
and Geiger; in political economy to Ricardo, Mark, LaSalle and to 
Bloch; in criminology to Lombroso and Max Nordau; in mathematics to 
Sylvester, who with Cayler, founded modern higher algebra; in explora- 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


653 


tion to Emin Pasha; in astronomy to the Herschels, to Goldshmidt, 
who discovered fourteen asteroids and thousands of new stars, and to 
Beer, who has been called the first cartographist of the moon; in medicine 
to Roller, discoverer of cocaine, to Virchow and Koch, the renowned 
specialists in tuberculosis; in botany to Cohn and Pringsheim, who are 
among the first botanists of Germany; in finance to the Rothschilds, who 
perfected modern finance and popularized national loans; to Poliakoff 
and Pereres, the great Russian and French railway owners; in journalism 
to Pulitzer, to Rosewater and Ochs; in diplomacy to Oscar Strauss and 
Solomon Hirsch; in charity to Montifiore, to Baron and Baroness de 
Hirsch, Schiff, Nathan Strauss and Mrs. Esther Hermann. 

“It may seem by this all too brief enumeration how few of these great 
names are connected with finance. The Jewish people retain in all its 
original vigor the spirituality of old Israel. They are still devoted to the 
things of the spirit, and scholarship, philosophy, art, in fact all intellecutal 
studies are still their favorite and fundamental form of energy. Let it be 
said to civilization’s shame that of the eleven million Jews in the world 
more than half this number are still subjected in Russia and Roumania 
to the infamous restrictions and oppressions of the Dark Ages. 

“In this brief and necessarily incomplete discussion I have tried to 
outhne the principal contributions of the Jewish people to human advance¬ 
ment. A complete description of their achievements would involve a 
review of the history of almost every important nation both of the present 
and the past, and the world itseff. They have been patriotic in the 
countries of their exile and adoption and cosmopolitan in almost every 
age. In the great transition periods, in the movements for human elevation 
they have played fundamental parts. They have been the messengers 
of an ideahsm from which have flowed purity in religion, loftiness in morals, 
equality in society, and majesty in law. In philosophy, science, literature, 
finance, in general culture, in domestic virtue, in patriotism and phil¬ 
anthropy, they have been world pioneers, world counselors. In the 
preservation of their identity, vitality and refinement through centuries 
of cruelty and oppression they have established an example which will 
give new strength and hope to inhumanity’s victims everywhere. Recall¬ 
ing their marvelous record, a record fairly glittering with blessings for 
mankind, it seems unthinkable that death and torture and exclusion 
should have been their fortune through so many ages and that today 
they suffer the most ferocious and inexorable discriminations in Eastern 
Europe. This last condition is the foulest stain on our civilization, 
the darkest indictment of our time. If Protestants were wronged in 
Eastern Europe as are the Jews, and I, a Protestant, make the assertion, 
protests would be thundered from the leading powers and peoples of the 
earth, protests which unheeded would be re-enforced with battleships. 

“How proud the heritage of the Jewish young men and women! How 
inspiring the task which confronts them! With that purity and culture 
must they fill their souls and lives in order to keep unfurled and spot¬ 
less the banners of the spirit! With what courage must they defend 
the principles of equality and justice; with what devotion must they take 
up the cause of their bleeding brethren of the Russian and Roumanian 
captivities! May they continue to promote with every energy the wel¬ 
fare of the respective nations of their allegiance, to spread the teachings 
and ideals of intellectual and political freedom, of fraternity among 
republics and empires as well as men and thus bring nearer to humanity 
the realization of Isaiah’s dream of universal peace.” 

— Morris Sheppard, U. S. Senator from Texas. From address 
before the Young Men's and Women's Culture Society of Temple 
Redeph Sholon, N. Y. City, April 25, 1906. 


JOHN SHERMAN (1823-1900), Ohio 


TARIFF 

“The strength of our country depends upon the diversity of our indus¬ 
tries, upon our ability to supply at home all the chief wants of our people, 
that therefore we ought not only to grow food, but to manufacture 
fabrics if iron, wool, cotton, wood and of other mineral and textile material 
of which we have a raw supply, and that this policy can be best advanced 
by a reasonable tax of the foreign article, which will not only yield us 
revenue, but will give our home labor the advantage in competition with 
the poorly paid labor of foreign countries. To this, it is answered, that 
the consumer pays the tax not only on the article imported, but on the 
article manufactured. This may be true to a certain extent in the begin¬ 
ning, but the incidental benefit of the tax, by diversifying industry, is so 
generally distributed as to be equalized by all classes, and experience 
shows that domestic competition in a little while reduces the cost of the 
home article to what the foreign article would have been without the tax.” 

—John Sherman, at Wooster, 0., 1881. 

THE CURRENCY QUESTION 

|^“It is idle for us to try to discuss with intelligence the currency question 
until we are impressed with the truth, the universality and the immuta¬ 
bility of this axiom, that is that a specie standard is the best and the only 
true standard of all values, recognized as such by all civilized nations of 
our generation, and estabhshed as such by the experience of all commercial 
nations that have existed from the earliest period of recorded time. 
Many of the crude ideas now advanced spring from ignoring it. The 
most ingenious sophistries are answered by it. It is the governing prin¬ 
ciple of finance. It is proved by experience, is stated clearly by every 
leading writer on political economy, and is now here in our own country 
proving its truth by measuring daily the value of our currency and of all 
we have to produce. I might, to establish the axiom, repeat the history 
of finance, from the shekels of silver, ‘current money with the merchant,’ 
paid by Abraham, to the last sale of stock in New York. * * * 

Neither governments, nor parliaments, nor congresses can change this law.” 

—From John Sherman's speech, Jan., 187If., in U. S. Senate: 

Sherman's ‘Recollections of Forty Year.^', 1^19. 


JOHN H. FLANIGAN OVER THE GRAVE OF ALBERT CAHN 

“The manly man sees God, not in the earthquake nor in the whirl¬ 
wind, but traces His finger in the orbits of the planets; he learns of Him, 
not from books or men, but in the seed which reproduces its kind after 
resting for centuries in Egyptian tombs. 

“Spring, resplendent, bursting from the loins of dead Winter, sounds the 
bugle call of the resurrection; the returning birds sing of the new, the 
better life. 

“ ‘The whisper of the trembling leaves is freighted with their breath. 

Who sleep beneath the grassy eaves their sweetest sleep in death.’ 

“Yea, God is good, good, good. 

“He who lies here, dead, had such a God; hot one of frowns and wrath, 
but one of infinite love and gentleness. Such a God he loved, not feared; 
such a one he met, I doubt not, unabashed and unafraid. And I, as his 
friend, have no fears of the judgment of this godly God upon this manly 
man.”— Remarks at Carthage, Mo., Feb. 21, 1912. 



JEREMIAH SMITH (1759-1842), New Hampshire 


LAW AND POLITICS 

“In all my experience, I have never known politics to confer law knowl¬ 
edge or professional distinction, but have known law knowledge to elevate 
the political man. The road to law is not through politics, but aside, 
apart from it. It takes away, but never gives. On the subject of politics, 
it is material to state, that they unfit the mind for science of any sort, 
certainly for the severe science of law, logic, or mathematics. As managed 
with us, they whet and brighten some of the faculities, invention, imag¬ 
ination, knowledge of men and things, the talent of diversifying, describ¬ 
ing, abusing an adversary, etc., but unfavorable to accuracy of thinking, 
talking, writing, speaking. In State squabbles a little knowledge, loose 
and general, is better than a great deal of sound and correct knowledge 
and information.”— MorisorCs Life of Jeremiah Smith, 262-3. 

BUTLER’S ANALOGY 

“Everybody should read Bishop Butler’s Analogy once a year till he 
can understand it, and once a year afterwards to enjoy it. You talk 
of the wealth of the Church of England, but if all the revenues of the 
See of Durham from the Conquest were accumulated in one vast sum, 
the whole would be of less value than that inestimable work.” 

—John H. Morison^s Life of Smith p. 503. 

JUSTICE NOT FORM 

“If the world should be pleased to speak of me after I am dead, let 
them say he was a judge who never permitted justice to be strangled 
in the nets of form.”— Morison^s Life, p. 177. 

HOW TO GROW RICH 

“The way to grow rich is not by earnings, but by careful keeping, and 
prudent spending.”-— Morison’s Life of, 4-90. 

LABOR VS. LEARNING 

“Depend upon it, that vulgar thing called labor, pains, care and 
diligence, gives better security for success in the world, indeed, for the 
acquisition for everything good, than ability and learning.” 

— Morison'sLife of, 4S8. 

LESSON FROM PHILOSOPHY 

“The liabihty to pain and injury proves how entirely the human body 
if formed with reference to the mind, and to a state of trial and disciphne; 
since, without the continued call to exertion, which danger and the 
uncertainty of life infer, the development of our faculties would be 
imperfect, and the mind would remain, as it were, uneducated. It is 
one thing to make a machine for the purposes of the body only and another 
to make a machine for a body with a mind and soul. Weakness and liabil¬ 
ity to injury, therefore, imply no imperfections in the frame of our bodies. 
A deep contemplation of the subject will evince the incomparable per- 


656 


GEEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


fection both of the plan and execution. The body was intended by our 
all-wise, all-good and merciful Creator to be subject to derangement and 
accident, and to become in the course of life more and more fragile, until, 
by some failure in the frame-work or vital action, life terminates. That 
the soul may live, this tabernacle of clay must be dissolved and perish.” 

— MorisorCs Life of, 367. 

SMITH HAD A MIND OF HIS OWN 

“One thing I must confess, I have now in my old age, less deference 
for the opinion of others than I had in earlier life; not that I think better 
of my own wisdom, but less of others; I do not think of myself, but for 
myself.”— Life of Morison, 4-50. 

REBUKE TO THE WITNESS DEARBORN 

In a cause which Judge Smith was to argue, a man by the name of 
Haines was an important witness on the opposite side, and many witnesses 
had been introduced to show that no reliance could be placed upon his 
testimony. In opposition to these witnesses, one Truevorthy Gove 
Dearborn, a man of some little consequence, testified that Haines was a 
man to be relied upon. Mr. Smith in Ms argument, speaking of the strong 
evidence against Haines’ character, concluded by saying, “All who have 
ever known Mm testify in the most decided manner that he is not to 
be trusted, except Truevorthy Gove Dearborn, a man just like him.” 
This was spoken in the most contemptuous manner, and as if the witness 
were utterly untrustworthy of notice, not a word was added. Mr. Dear¬ 
born, as was natural enough, was exceedingly angry, and, determined 
to be revenged, went to Mr. Smith’s lodging, and told him that he should 
bear such insult and abuse from no man, however elevated Ms position. 
Mr. Smith, with a most good-humored and comic expression, rephed, 
“What did I say? You testified that Haines was a man of excellent 
character, and I said that you were just like Mm.” 

— Morison's Life of, 280-1. 

Smith had been four terms in Congress, judge of the U. S. Circuit 
Court, cMef justice of the Superior Court for 7 years; then governor of 
the State, and then cMef justice of the Supreme Court for 3 years; was of 
Scotch-Irish stock; possessed of great natural abilities; but like Mason, 
he was no orator; was with Mason and Webster for plaintiff, Sullivan and 
Bartlett for defense in the Dartmouth College causes. Mr. Webster 
has been heard so say, that having practiced in many courts, from that of 
justice of the peace, where he began, up to that of John Marshall, at 
WasMngton, he had never found a judge before whom it was more 
pleasant and satisfactory to transact business than it was before CMef 
Justice Smith; that he had known as judge none who was more quick 
in Ms perceptions, more ready with all ordinary learning, or possessing 
more power to make a complicated case appear plain to a jury, more 
perspicuous. He added with CMef Justice Smith, industry in preparation 
on the part of counsel, reasearch into the points of law, and a frank and 
manly presentment of the whole case, placing it upon its true merits, 
without disguise or concealment, would go as far for the maintenance of 
truth and justice, as with any judge he had ever known. And added 
Webster: “Smith knows more about law than I do or ever will.” 


EDWIN M. STANTON (1814-1869), Ohio 


ADULTERY 

“When a man has obtained such a power over another man’s wife that 
he can not only entice her from her husband’s house, but separate her 
from her child, for the purpose of guilt, it shows that by some means 
he has acquired such an unholy mastery over that woman’s body and 
soul that there is no chance of saving her while he lives, and the only 
hope of her salvation is that God’s swift vengeance shall overtake him. 
The sacred glow of well-placed domestic affection, no man knows better 
than your Honor, grows brighter and brighter as the years advance, 
and the faithful couple whose hands were joined in holy wedlock in the 
morning of youth find their hearts drawn closer to each other as they 
descend the hill of fife to sleep together at its foot; but lawless love is 
short-lived as it is criminal, and the neighbor’s wife so hotly pursued, 
by trampling down every human feeling and divine law, is speedily sup¬ 
planted by the object of some fresher lust, and then the wretched victim 
is sure to be soon cast off into common prostitution, and swept through 
a miserable life and a horrible death to the gates of hell, unless a husband’s 
arm shall save her. Who seeing this thing would not exclaim to the 
unhappy husband: ‘Hasten, hasten, hasten to save the mother of your 
child. Although she be lost as a wife, rescue her from the horrid adulterer; 
and may the Lord who watches over the home and family guide the 
bullet and direct the stroke!” 

—Extract from Stanto7i’s argument to the Court, upon the law, 
in defense of Daniel E. Sickles, for the murder of Phillip Barton 
Key, Washington, D. C., 1859. 

THE AGONY OF A CUCKOLD 

“What agony is equal to his who knows not whether the children 
gathered around his board are his own offspring or an adulterous brood, 
hatched in his bed?”— Extract from the Sickles defense. 

GOD IS ON OUR SIDE 

“Surely God is on our side, for we have done what we could to ruin 
ourselves, and we have failed to do it.” 

—Said hy Stanton, after the fight with President Andrew Jackson. 

SUMNER’S FAMOUS LETTER TO STANTON 

“Stick, C. S.,” (Charles Sumner), Mr. Sumner wrote Stanton from 
the Senate when President Johnson was trying to remove him from the 
office of Secretary of War. This letter, after Mr. Sumner’s death, sold 
for a large sum in New York City. 

BEECHER ON STANTON’S TENDERNESS 

“Stanton was as tender as a woman—he was as tender as a lover. 
I had great admiration for him. Being told by a friend just from Wash¬ 
ington, in 1865, that Stanton was breaking down, I walked into a Wall 
street office, and wrote to him just what I had heard—that he was 
sick and broken down and desponding; that he need not despond, that 
the country was saved, and that if he did not do another thing he had 


(>58 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


done enough. I sent the letter, and in the course of a few days I got 
back a letter, and if it had been a woman writing in answer to a proposal, 
it would not have been more tender. And when I went to Washington 
he treated me with great tenderness, as if I had been his son. He evi¬ 
dently got rest from his great cares through literature, as Lincoln did 
from the humorists. I understood them both perfectly.” 

—Henry Ward Beecher—^ Reminisce tices of Ahraham Lincoln,^ 
252. 

CRIED WHEN LINCOLN DIED 

“When told at the bedside of the dying Lincoln, by Surgeon General 
Barnes that the President could not live till morning, Stanton exclaimed: 
‘Oh, no. General; no, no;’ and with an impulse, natural as it was unaffected, 
sat down and wept like a child, and said the next morning after his decease, 
‘He belongs to the Ages!’ ”— Our First Century, 891. 

DICTATED THE TERMS OF PEACE, 1865 

“Just before Lincoln’s inauguration, March 3, 1865, a dispatch arrived 
from General Grant, suggesting that terms with Lee, who had asked for 
an interview to negotiate peace. Mr. Lincoln was greatly incUned to 
permit his General-in-Chief to effect this negotiation. Stanton, who was 
present, and who kept silent while the discussion was going on, at length 
spoke out sternly: ‘Mr. President, tomorrow is inauguration day. If 
you are not to be President of an obedient and united people you had 
better not be inaugurated. Your work is already done, if any other 
authority than yours is for one moment to be recognized, or any terms 
made that do not signify that you are the supreme head of the Nation; 
if generals in the field are to negotiate peace, or any other chief magis¬ 
trate is to be acknowledged on this continent, then you are not needed, 
and you had better not take the oath of office.’ ‘Stanton, you are right,’ 
said the President, his whole tone changing, ‘let me have a pen.’ And 
Mr. Lincoln at once wrote as follows to General Grant for the Secretary 
of War to sign: ‘The President directs me to say to you that he wishes 
you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitu¬ 
lation of Lee’s army or some minor or purely military matter. He 
instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon 
any political question. Such questions the President holds in his own 
hands, and will submit them to no military conference or convention. 
In the meantime you are to press to the utmost your military advantages.” 
— 2nd Nat'l Cyc. of American Biography, Article, ‘Stanton,’ 8Ji,. 

STANTON AND LINCOLN IN McCORMICK REAPER CASE 

“Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Stanton and George Harding were associated as 
counsel in the celebrated reaper patent case, McCormick v. Manney, 
6 McLean, 539, tried in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States Circuit 
Court, though they had not met before the trial. It is related on the one 
hand, that Lincoln was senior counsel, and that when the hearing came 
on, Stanton, undervaluing Lincoln’s character and standing as a lawyer, 
with unprofessional assurance, grasped the role of making the argument 
on the law points, to which, as junior counsel, he had no claim under 
the custom of the bar, that as the Court would hear only two lawyers 
on a side, and as a review of the mechanical questions were specially 
confided to Mr. Harding, this arrangement deprived Mr. IJncoln, and 
to his disappointment, of the opportunity of speaking before a prominent 
Court and a new and distinguished auditory. On the other hand, we are 
distinctly informed, by one of the clients in the suit that Mr. Lincoln 
was the junior counsel, and Mr. Stanton and Mr. Harding had made so 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


659 


much longer and more elaborate preparations that the clients themselves 
determined their selection to make the ar^ments; that therefore, Mr. 
Lincoln’s displacement arose from no unfairness of anyone, but simply 
from the fact that the Court had limited the number of speeches.” 

—5 Nicolay and Hay*s Life of Lincoln, ISS-Jf.. 

Mr. Lamon, in his Life of Lincoln, 322, and Herndon, in his Life of 
Lincoln, 355, both sustain the first theory. The former was a fellow- 
member of the bar with Lincoln, and the latter his partner for many 
years. Mr. Herndon also says that upon this occasion, Mr. Stanton 
described Lincoln as a ‘‘long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty 
linen duster of a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched 
stains that resembled a map of the continent.” 

L. E. Crittenden, in the June, 1894, Green Bag, relates that the case 
was appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, and both Stanton and Lincoln 
prepared briefs, and when Stanton read Lincoln’s brief he tore his up and 
insisted upon Lincoln’s arguing the case in that Court, which he did, and 
won a great victory. 

John T. Richards, in his ‘‘Lincoln, the Lawyer-Statesman” (1916), 
pages 82-3, says: 

• ‘‘When Mr. Lincoln reached the hotel, Stanton and Harding were 
absent and Mr. Lincoln awaited their return. He stood at the entrance 
to the hotel as they approached and was greeted indifferently as they 
passed by him and went to the room of Mr. Harding. How they Imew 
Mr. Lincoln Mr. Harding did not say, but on arriving at his room a 
conference was had between the two lawyers, and Mr. Stanton insisted 
that it would never do to allow a man of Mr. Lincoln’s type to make an 
argument in the case. Mr. Harding described Mr. Lincoln as awkward 
and ungainly in appearance, his clothes utterly devoid of the tailor’s 
art, ill-fitting and in no wise suited to his angular frame. He wore heavy 
boots and his appearance was that of the average western farmer of that 
period. Having determined that Mr. Lincoln should not be allowed to 
participate in the hearing of the case, Harding and Stanton sought a 
method to bring about the desired result, and it was finally determined 
to send for Mr. Lincoln and inform him that as there were but two counsel 
on the opposite side of the ease, they had decided that it would be unwise 
that more than two arguments should be made on behalf of the defend¬ 
ants. It was agreed that Mr. Harding should be the spokesman when 
Mr. Lincoln came, and upon his arrival at the room of Mr. Harding, the 
latter informed him of the conclusion which had been reached and told 
him that he (Har(hng) would make the argument on the technical questions 
regarding the infringement and that the other argument would be made 
by Mr. Stanton. Mr. Lincoln rephed, ‘Very well, gentlemen, I have here 
some suggestions which I had intended to use in my argument which you 
are at liberty to use if you see fit,’ at the same time taking a manuscript 
from the inside pocket of his coat and handing it to Mr. Harding. Shortly 
thereafter Mr. Lincoln left the room and Mr. Harding threw the manu¬ 
script into the waste-basket without opening it.” 

— E. N. Dickerson, of Philadelphia, a noted patent lawyer, and 
Reverdy Johnson, the famous Baltimore lawyer, represented the claim¬ 
ant, McCormick; and George Harding, the famous patent lawyer, of 
Philadelphia, Edward M. Stanton, and Abraham Lincoln, represent¬ 
ed Manny, the defendant. The case was McCormick v. Manny, tried 
in Cincinnati, in 1855. See also TarhelVs ^Life of Lincoln,* Vol. 2, 
5 If. 

THE DEBT THIS COUNTRY OWES STANTON 

“In 1862 the country was in peril from which it could only be extricated 
by a Secretary of War with the fierce determination and patriotism of 


660 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Edwin M. Stanton. Mr. Lincoln knew Ms man, and wMle members of 
Ms Cabinet were hesitating, doubting, fearing, he made Mr. Stanton 
Secretary of War, and Mr. Stanton made Mmself the greatest war 
mimster of the century. The country is beginmng to find out, and another 
generation wMch is able to read history without prejudice, will know 
how great a debt the country owes to Edwin M. Stanton.” 

— L. E. Chittenden, June, 189J/., Green Bag, 268. 

“LINCOLN IS A D-D FOOL”—INCIDENT 

“A committee of Western men, headed by Mr. Lovejoy, procured from 
President Lincoln an important order looking to the exchange of Eastern 
and Western soldiers, with a view to more effective work. Repairing 
to the office of the Secretary, Mr. Lovejoy explained the scheme, as he 
had done before to the President, but he was met by a fiat refusal. 

“ ‘But we have the President’s order, sir,’ said Lovejoy. 

“ ‘Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?’ said Stanton. 

“ ‘He did, sir.’ 

“ ‘Then he is a d-d fool,’ said the irate Secretary. 

“ ‘Do you mean to say the President is a d-dfool?’ asked Lovejoy, 

in amazement. 

“ ‘Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.’ 

“The bewildered congressman from Illinois betook Mmself at once to 
the President, and related the result of his conference. 

“ ‘Did Stanton say I was a d-d fool?’ asked Lincoln, at the close of 

the recital. 

“ ‘He did, sir, and repeated it.’ 

“After a moment’s pause, and looMng up, the President said; ‘If he 

said I was a d-d fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, 

and generally says what he means. I will step over and see him.’ ” 

—George B. Julian, ^Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, 56. 

THE HIGHEST AND ONLY RELIGION 

“God, in aU His commuMcations with man, clothed his language in 
the Mghest imagery. All light and aU color that make life beautiful 
are the affair of a little nerve God has endowed us with to enjoy His 
precious gifts that after all live oMy^in our brain. TMs principle, I 
maintain, runs tMough all, and the Mghest religion, if not the only religion, 
is in a true appreciation of God’s works. Thus we work our way through 
Nature up to Nature’s God.” Written by Stanton, in boyhood, wMch he 
wrote at intervals snatched from less agreeable studies. 

—Don Piatts, Men Who Saved the Union,' 52. 

THE WHEELING BRIDGE CASE 

“In the December term of 1850 the struggle for supremacy between the 
steamboats and the railroads came to the front, in the great ease of 
Pennsylvama v. Wheeling Bridge Co. (9 Howard, 647), argued by Stanton 
against Reverdy Johnson, ‘with a degree of ability and learning worthy 
of the palmiest days of the Old Bar of the Supreme Court.’ It was held 
that the bridge was an obstruction to commerce, and also a nuisance as 
an infringement on the common law rights of the State of Pennsylvania.” 
— Warren’s ^History of the American Bar,’ Jf.39. 

JOHN T. MORSE, JR. ON STANTON 

“No one liked him (Stanton) living; scarcely anyone has wished to 
say much of him dead. An advocate biographer has, indeed, presented 
a sort of a brief for Mm, and Mr. Rhodes, kindliest of historians, has 





GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


661 


mentioned his virtues; for, in fact, he had virtues; devotion to the cause, 
a very ^rreed for hard work, financial integrity, a merciless energy against 
the rascal ('ontractors. But it cannot be forgotten that he had the odious 
faults of a bully; he was violent and insolent, but only when violence 
and insolence was safe; he was supposed to be personally timid; he could 
be mean and unjust; above all he repeatedly outraged the magnanimous 
forbearance of Mr. Lincoln, in a way in which no American can forgive. 
Substantially every writer’s pen is against him; or, at least, no writer’s 
pen is for him. Mr. Welles rends and tears him without mercy. * * * 

The two men, after a few tentative feints and clashes, had inevitably to 
try out their comparative strength in a conclusive bout. It took place, 
and thereafter Mr. Stanton rarely ventured into Mr. Welles’ path.” 

• —From Morse s Introduction to the Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. 1, 
p. XXXL 

Welles in his diary says Stanton was dishonest, vol. 1, 127; that he 
was mercurial, arbitrary and apprehensive, violent and fearful, rough and 
impulsive, yet possessed of ability and energy, vol. 2, 309. 

STANTON ON THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH 

“I remember very well going into Stanton’s room in the War Depart¬ 
ment on the day of the Gettysburg celebration, and he said, ‘Have you 
sehn these Gettysburg speeches?’ ‘No,’ said I; ‘I didn’t know you had 
them.’ He said, ‘Yes; and the people will be delighted with them. 
Edward Everett’s is the speech of a scholar, polished to the last possibility. 
It is elegant and it is learned; but Lincoln’s speech will be read by a 
thousand men where one reads Everett’s, and it will be remembered as 
long as anybody’s speeches are remembered who speaks the English 
language.’ That was the truth. If you will compare these two speeches 
now you will get an idea how superior that intellectual faculty is, which 
sees the vitality of a question, and knows how to state it; how superior 
that intellectual faculty is which regards everything with the fire of 
earnestness in the soul, with the relentless purpose of a heart devoted to 
objects beyond Uterature.” 

— Chas. A. Dana, in lecture, ‘‘Lincoln and His Cabinet^ 

STANTON’S PLACE IN THE WAR 

“Stanton’s was the master mind of the War. To his indomitable will and 
iron nature we owe all that we accomplished in that direction.* * * 

He had his defects but no weaknesses. His very sins had a fierce strength 
in them that helped on instead of retarding his work. He could crush 
a personal enemy under the iron heel of his military power, but the men 
he favored, such as Hooker, Pope, and Thomas, were eminently fitted 
for the task assigned them. * * * He finished his great work, 
resigned his commission of office and his life, at the same instant, for he 
staggered from his department on the arm of Death. The accumulation 
of an independence, accomplished through long years of trial at the bar, 
disappeared during his term of service, and he left the office a poor man. 
The monument to Lincoln has not yet been built. When it is, the column 
that holds aloft the form of our greatest man of that trying period should 
have supported the base, four bronze figures of Chase, Seward, Stanton 
and Thomas. And so will history, in the hearts of the people, group 
those to whom we owe our existence as a Nation.” 

— Don Piatts, ‘Men Who Saved the Union,' 

JOHN W. FORNEY’S TESTIMONY 

“A close student, a clear, compact logician, a bold impetuous advocate, 
his best powers were given to his profession. Sought after far and near. 


662 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


and employed in most of the great cases, his reputation and large influence 
in his native State of Ohio and his adopted State of Pennsylvania 
assumed national proportions when he removed to the City of Washing¬ 
ton. He towered in the Supreme Court, a leader of leaders. An authority 
of wide acceptation, he was a genius of his school.”— Jno. W. Forney’s 

^Anecdotes of Public Men,’ Vol. 1, 18^. 

JAS. SCHOULER’S DESCRIPTION OF STANTON 

“Stanton was of moderate height, burly and thickset. His large head 
was decked with a mass of black hair, and a long and heavy black beard. 
His dark eyes darted through the glasses of thin-rimmed spectacles, with 
a quick and searching glance. His movements, like this thoughts,’ were 
rapid and alert; and his absorption in the immediate work and his energy 
in prosecuting it seemed almost superhuman in intensity. He would work 
at his desk late at night, while a carriage waited outside to take him home. 
Robust in health and less than fifty years of age when he first took 
Cameron’s place, four years of prodigious toil utterly wrecked him, and 
he died prematurely. A natural tendency to cerebral excitement increased 
greatly under the exhausting pressure of his cares and the novel sense of 
power. He firmly believed that the Lord directed the cause he was serv¬ 
ing, yet his nature was not buoyant on the whole, and he dwelt less upon 
what had been done weU than upon what might have been done better. 
Parsimonious of praise, he did not spare harsh censure. Stanton was 
blunt, and often offensively so, rude of speech, and lacking much in suavity 
and delicacy of feehng; but sincerity or preoccupation accounted much for 
it. He had strong passions, strong antipathies towards those who would 
not work with him. When he once disliked a man the desire swelled in 
his heart to get rid of him; and as no friendship could be strong to over¬ 
come his sense of public duty, rancor would set in whenever one who had 
lost his confidence resisted. Above all else he wanted men uncorrupt in 
public dealings, and where he suspected fraud, he would watch his 
prey like a basilisk, with venomous imagination, imparting to others 
his suspicion before the proofs were ready. It has been said that while 
Lincoln never fully trusted any man, Stanton trusted no man; yet the 
Secretary had his likings, was even genial and kind in his best moods, 
showing tenderness of feeling. But sycophancy he detested, and praise 
put him instantly on his guard. He had quick intelligence, and, valu¬ 
ing his time, comprehended all he cared for before half was told him. 
This made his judgment swift and often too hasty; and a caller who did 
not speak clearly and briefly might be impatiently and even rudely 
interrupted. Congressmen and the patronage brokers found him a diffi¬ 
cult man to deal with. He stood sternly at his desk at the hour for 
visitors, and when the whole throng were ushered in compelled each 
applicant, high or low, to state audibly his request, which a stenographer 
at his elbow recorded together with his rough answer. He was too strained 
to be of judicial temper, and once deciding a point refused to reconsider. 
Great virtues were thus hedged in among glaring faults; and though 
wholly without thirst for popularity, he made himself more unpopular 
than he might have done. Enemies will spring up like weeds, while 
friends are made and kept only by watchful effort.” 

—6 Schouler’s Hist.TJ. S., 160-1. 


ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS (1812-1883), Georgia 

WILLIAM A. TRENT’S ESTIMATE 

“Stephens was probably the ablest constitutional lawyer of his section.” 

—^Southern Statesmen,^ 21^7. 

HIS HISTORY OF THE WAR 

“Stephens was occupied for nearly four years writing a history of the 
war, completing the same in 1870. It is unquestionably the ablest 
exposition and defense of the Southern cause that has yet been made by 
any participant in the stirring events it describes, and it is written in an 
admirable temper. It is deficient just where Mr. Stephens’ own states¬ 
manship was deficient, it argues constitutional questions from the point 
of view of the lawyer rather than from that of the historian, a procedure 
not without precedent in the North. * * * It is a book that will be 

read with respect, in spite of its dialogue form, by every serious student 
of American history; and it always will be a monument to its author’s 
fine quahties of heart and head.”— Trent's ^Southern Statesmen,’’ 250-1. 

A TOUCHING STORY 

Stephens, in an address dehvered in 1840, at a meeting in Alexandria, 
Va., for the benefit of the Orphan Asylum and Free School of that city, 
related the following anecdote: 

“A poor little boy on a cold night in June, with no home or roof to 
shelter his head, no paternal or maternal guardian or guide^ to protect 
or direct him on his way, reached at night-fall the house of a rich planter, 
who took him in and fed, lodged and sent him on his way with his blessing. 
Those kind attentions cheered his heart and inspired him with fresh 
courage to battle with the obstacles of fife. Years rolled round, Providence 
led Mm on; he had reached the legal profession; his host had died; the 
cormorants that prey upon the substance of man had formed a conspiracy 
to get from the widow her estates. She went for the nearest counsel to 
commit her cause to Mm, and that counsel proved to be the orphan boy 
who years before was welcomed and entertained by her deceased husband. 
The stimulus of a warm and tenacious gratitude was now added to the 
ordinary motives connected with the profession. He undertook her 
cause with a will, not easily to be resisted; he gained it; the widow’s 
estates were secured to her in perpetuity;” and Mr. Stephens added, with 
an emphasis of emotion that sent its electric thriU tMoughout the house, 
“That orphan boy now stands before you.” 

LINCOLN ON STEPHENS 

Under date of February 2, 1848, from the House of Representatives, 
wMle serving as member of Congress, Lincoln wrote tMs short note to 
Herndon, Ms law partner, at Springfield, Ill.: 

“Dear William: I take up my pen to tell you that Mr. Stephens, of 
Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like 
Logan’s (Stephen T., not John A.), has just concluded the very best 
speech, of an hour’s length, I ever heard. My old withered, dry e^fes 
(he was not quite 39 years old then) are full of tears yet.” 

THE SMALLEST EAR OF CORN, ETC. 

At another time, wMle President, Stephens came to call on Lincoln, 
at the WMte House, and Stephens, who weighed less than mnety pounds, 


664 


GHEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


threw off his overcoat. Said Lincoln, looking at the little man, and then 
the large coat: “That is the smallest ear of corn I ever saw for so large a 
husk.” 

ANDREW JOHNSON’S ORATORY 

Stephens, a competent judge, considered Andrew Johnson’s speech 
against secession, the best one made in the Senate during the whole 
controversy.— Horace White's Life of Lyman Trumbull, 2^6. 

MARY CLEMMER’S DESCRIPTION 

“In front of the Speaker’s desk (House of Rep.) sits Alex. H. Stephens, 
that almost disembodied spirit, that will-o’-the-wisp of a patriot, who still 
persists in staying in the most transparent shell of a body, and bringing 
it punctually to Congress.” — Written in 1879, J years before his decease. 

THE LAWYER 

“No pursuit in life is more honorable or useful than that of the law, 
when followed as it should be. None requires more rigidly a stout ad¬ 
herence to all the precepts and principles of morality, or the possession 
and practice of the highest and noblest virtues that elevate and adorn 
human nature. Not even the office of the holy minister opens up such a 
wide field for simply doing good to one’s fellowman. The lawyer’s 
province is to aid in the administration of justice, to assist the oppressed, 
to uphold the weak, to contend against the strong, to expose the wrong, 
to find out deceit and to run down vice and crimes of all grades, shades 
and characters. What a field is his for calming passions, allaying strife, 
composing disputes, settling quarrels and quieting contentions, 

“A good lawyer is ever a peacemaker. Pettyfoggers there may be 
whose sole object is to stir up litigation that they may profit by it. The 
man who enters the bar, with his soul fired by aspirations fitting his high 
vocation, looks to nothing but the advancement of justice. The tangled 
web of most private controversies can be better unravelled and straight¬ 
ened by bringing the parties together in private conference than by carry¬ 
ing them into court. This the lawyer, properly imbued with the spirit 
of his calling, will always strive to effect. Contentions that originate in 
impulse, passion-or misunderstanding, can often in this way, be speedily 
adjusted and reconciliations brought about. In controversies involving 
doubting questions of law, in the settlement of estates, the descent of 
property, construction of wills and conveyances, the judicial' forum 
must be the resort. But with what intense regard for truth, for right and 
justice, does the lawyer investigate facts and pore over his books, pre¬ 
paring himself for such occasions. 

“In the Temple of Justice he glories in the fact that everything is 
weighed in her scales. Reason and wisdon are his necessary weapons. 
The materials to be handled are human acts colored with human passions, 
prejudices and infirmities. What a field here for the exhibition of the 
noblest virtues in exposing knavery, fraud, villainy and falsehood of 
every sort, and truth their just reward. The lawyer is brought in contact 
with men of all characters, the lowest and the vilest, as well as the highest 
and purest. Hence, his means of acquiring thorough knowledge of human 
nature are superior to those of all other classes combined. His opportu¬ 
nities, not only for allaying strife, settling quarrels and bringing about 
reconcilliations, but for giving proper rebuke to crime and iniquity, 
are better and far more numerous than those of the minister of the 
Gospel. He sits, as it were, in the market-place and on the highways; 
not a day passes in which he may not, and should not, dispense with a 
liberal hand the Christian charities of his counsel in the succor of the 
needy, the destitute, the wronged, the widow and the orphan. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


665 


“There should be nothing mean or low about him. He should under¬ 
stand the shifts of fraud, deceit and cunning, in order to be able to 
circumvent those who deal in these, without ever practicing or counte¬ 
nancing them himself; but, on the contrary, ever possessing and holding 
them up to condemnation. He should have no ambition but to serve his 
fellow men and to do good. In doing the greatest possible good to others, 
he achieves the greatest good for himself.” 

—From his Prison Journal, while imprisoned at Ft. Warren, near 
Boston, Mass., July, 1865. 

ROBERT TOOMBS 

“Toombs is one of the most extraordinary men I have ever known. 
As a talker, I have never known his equal. As a lawyer, I have never 
seen his superior before judge or jury. As a legislator in debate, few 
in the House or Senate ever wished to encounter him; none ever did to 
win any laurels by it. His mind is very quick and active. Contrary 
to general opinion, he has always been a close and hard student; but his 
power of analysis and generalization are so great that he can acquire 
more in less time than any one I ever saw. In reading the report of a ease 
or an author on any subject, he at once seizes upon the real ideas, gleaning 
the vital part from the general verbiage by a process rapid as intuition. 
As a public speaker or ‘stump orator’, no one in any age or country ever 
had more power than he, in the days of his prime. He was thoroughly 
read in local law, in United States history, and in national law. His 
true greatness did not consist in statesmanship; he was goverened too 
much by passion and impulse. As a lawyer, debater, popular orator, 
planter, political economist, it would be difficult to find his equal. His 
superior could not be found in his day.” 

—‘Prison Journal,' Ft. Warren, Aug. 7, '65. 

BACON’S ESSAYS 

“I am disappointed in Bacon’s Essays. They are nothing but loose 
sayings on divers subjects. They are, in some respects, not unlike 
Solomon’s Proverbs. The best is on ‘Friendship;’ there is much worth 
reading in that.”— ‘Prison Journal,' July 11^, '65. 

PREACHERS, GOD’S VICEGERENTS 

“Preachers have less charity and magnanimity than any other class 
of men. These are qualities for which, as a class, they are not distin¬ 
guished. There are many exceptions, such as Henry Ward Beecher 
and others. Still what I have said is true of the average of all sects. 
So much have I been impressed with this, that I would seldom permit a 
preacher to sit on a jury for the trial of any person accused of crime, when 
I was counsel for the defense, if I could help it. 

“I once had a pointed talk with a reverend gentleman of my own 
church, who undertook, in a pious way, to lecture me on the sin of defend¬ 
ing criminals. I was engaged in the Richmond Court, in defense of Keener, 
charged with the murder of Reese, one of the most important criminal 
cases in which I ever appeared. Excitement against Keener was intense. 
Little or no sympathy was felt for him in any quarter, and least of ah 
among those professing to follow the teachings of Him, who, in the case 
of the Syro-Phenician woman, said to those demanding condemnation: 
‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Facts clearly showed 
that the homicide was not murder under the law; that, at most, it was 
manslaughter, if not perfectly justifiable under the State Code. But 
the reverend doctor of divinity, wholly incapable of weighing these facts, 
with the usual blood-thirsty propensity of Ins calling, demanded to know 


666 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


if I did not think I was committing: a sin in preventing the execution of 
‘justice?’ I replied: ‘No. In the first place I do not consider Keener 
guilty of murder, under the law; the law requires that he should not be so 
convicted or punished. In the second place, if the facts were different 
and he were guilty, 1 should not feel myself a sinner in endeavoring to 
procure his release. If we all had justice done us, that justice which your 
view of the facts and the law you are so anxious should be meted out to 
Keener we should, according to your own teaching, have been in hell 
long ago. If Christ died to save the guilty from damnation, I do not 
think I sin in trying to prolong their lives that through grace they may 
escape hell. Much less do I feel that I commit a sin in trying to save one 
who is not guilty, even though I oppose a multitude.’ This closed our 
conference. He gave me up, perhaps as a reprobate. 

“But I did not abate my exertions for Keener. Such was the feehng 
against him, inspired by clerical advocates of justice, and others imbued 
with like ideas, that he was convicted on the first trial; convicted, in part 
by judicial wrong rulings, to which I took exceptions: the case went 
to the Supreme Court; a new trial was granted; and Keener was acquitted. 
The judge and the preachers, as well as the whole tribe of Javerts, were 
scandalized at the escape of their victim. The old Aztec Priests could 
not have felt more rage at the escape of one stript and bound for their 
sacrificial altars, than did these fanatical devotees who wanted human 
offering made to their idol of human justice. But I rejoiced in the success¬ 
ful performance of such labor and in a result that was nearer approxima¬ 
tion than that of their desire to the standard of Divine Justice. K I 
am ever to be tried for anything, may Heaven deliver me from a jury of 
preachers! I do not mean to express disrespect to ministers of the Gospel. 
They have their weaknesses and faults; and their most striking defect 
is a want of that charity which they, above all men, should not only 
preach but practice. They are too impressed with the idea that they are 
God’s vicegerents here below, expecially commissioned to deal out His 
wrath and vengeance.”— From 'Prison Journal,' July 6, 1865. 

JEFFERSON DAVIS 

“With politicians it is as it is with quacks in medicine; if the patient 
survives, the great work of cure is claimed to the credit, honor and skill 
of the doctor who almost killed him in spite of nature; while, if the patient 
dies from the prescription of the quack, it is all, with due submission and 
resignation, turned over to the score of Providence. So, I suppose it 
will be with the Southern States, their cause, their institutions, their 
ruin, and their leaders. These Southern leaders were certainly short¬ 
sighted; they evinced no wise forecast of statesmanship. Mr. Davis, 
in my opinion, ranks with the rest of them. If he had been a real states¬ 
man, he would have opposed secession. * * * Davis’s education, 

of scholarly finish, had come to him without struggle; he was of aris¬ 
tocratic temper and bearing; a West Pointer and a stickler for military 
form and order. * * * Had he been a statesman, he would have 

understood the people. They were fighting for rights, not for dynasty. 
He looked for nothing but independence or separate nationahty. * * * 

It would be difficult to find in the history of the world a man with such 
resources at his command, who made such poor use of them.” 

—From 'Prison Journal.' 

STEPHEN’S MAXIMS 

“ ‘The world treats a man very much as he treats it,’ or, ‘Whoever 
kicks the world will be apt to be kicked in turn.’ This was given me soon 
after my majority, by a man of experience, while I was chafing under 
some ill usage. I have repeated it to many young persons since. It 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


667 


recurs to me often, since I have been here (Ft. Warren Prison), obtruding 
itself upon the mind as Job’s comforters pressed their consolations on him. 
The inquiry springs up: ‘Do you hold to your maxim?’ If so, must 
you not admit that you have acted a very hard part toward the world?’ 
With the firmness of Job, I neither make the admission nor repudiate 
the maxim. I do know that my acts toward the whole human family 
have been marked by kindness. In all that I have done, from the begin¬ 
ning of the political troubles which have brought me here, I have been 
governed solely by a sense of duty to do the most good to my feUowmen 
that I could, under the circumstances. Personal ambition had no part 
in anything I have done; nor had prejudice toward the North; I never 
entertained to them any feeling of unMndness. My earnest desire, from 
the first, has been that the conflict might end in the speediest way possible 
for the interest and well-being of both sections of the country, for their 
advancement in prosperity and happiness, and for the preservation and 
perpetuation of their constitutional hberty. This, I thought, and still 
think, would be better effected by maintenance of the principles under 
which I was reared. They constitute the pole-star of my political life. 
I am not prepared to admit that I erred in entertaining them, and to 
govern my conduct accordingly, because I suffer as I do. Why I thus 
suffer I do not know, but I feel an internal* assurance that all will 
ultimately be right, let the sequel be as it may.” (Said by Stephens.) 
—^Recollections of A. H. Stephens,’ hy Myrta Lockett Avery, 14^5. 

RELIGION 

“Nothing more distinctly marks the character of a people than their 
religion. I believe Virginia was the only colony adopting the Church of 
England as its established system of worship. This shows the structme 
of her society, which in various respects followed more closely the Enghsh 
type than did that of any other colony.” 

—^Recollections of A. H. Stephens,’ 420 . 

STEPHENS’ APPEARANCE IN 1872 IN CONGRESS 

“An immense cloak, a high hat, and peering somewhere out of the 
middle, a thin, pale, sad face. How anything so small and sick and 
sorrowful could get here all the way from Georgia is a wonder. If he were 
laid out in a coffin, he needn’t look different, only when the fires would 
have gone out in the burning eyes, set as they are in the wax-white face, 
they seem to burn and blaze. That he is here at aU to offer the counsels 
of moderation and patriotism proves how invincible is the soul that 
dwells in tliis sunken frame. He took the modified oath in his chair, 
and his friends picked him up in it, and carried him off as if he were a 
feather.”—‘A newspaper article,’ ^Recollections of Stephens,’ 550. 

YOUNG LAWYER’S FIRST CASE 

“lam glad to hear you have got a case. This is your first in your new loca¬ 
tion, and I can not do better than repeat that a young man’s first cases 
at the law are the most important to him he will ever have. His reputa¬ 
tion is at stake. It should be a leading object with him to succeed in 
them beyond expectation. He ought to take no case, except such as he 
believes, on investigation, to be right.” 

—Advice to John Stephens, a nephew, when just settled in Atlanta, to 
practice, in 1872. 'Recollections,’ 555. 

NO EXCELLENCE WITHOUT GREAT LABOR 

“Nothing great and good can be accomphshed without labor and toil. 
Motion is the law of living nature. Inaction is the symbol of death. 


668 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


if it is not death itself. The mightiest engines, with strength and capacity 
sufficient to drive the mightiest ships across the stormy deep, are utterly 
useless without a moving power. Energy is the steam power, the motive 
principle of the intellectual capacity. It is the propelling force; and as 
in physics, momentum is resolvable into velocity and quantity of matter, 
so in metaphysics, the extent of human accomplishment may be resolved 
into the degree of intellectual endowment, and the energy with which it 
is directed. A small body driven by a great force will produce a result 
equal to, or even greater, than that of a much larger body moved by a 
considerably less force. So it is with minds. Hence, we often see men 
of comparatively small capacity, by greater energy alone leave, and justly 
leave, far behind them in the race for honors distinction and preferment.” 

DECISION AND ENERGY 

“For success in life, it is essential that there should be a fixedness of 
purpose as to the object and designs to be attained. There should be 
a clear conception of the outlines of that character which is to be estab¬ 
lished. The business of life, in whatever pursuit it may be directed, is 
a great work. And in this, as in all other undertakings, it is important 
in the outset to have a clear conception of what is to be done. This is 
the first thing to be settled: What profession or vocation is to be followed 
The only rule for determining this is natural ability and natural aptitude, 
or suitableness for the particular business selected. The decision in such 
case, should always be governed by that ideal of character which a man 
with high aspirations should always form for himself.” 


HAMPTON L. CARSON’S CHARACTERIZATION OF 
STANLEY MATTHEWS 

“In March, 1876, Matthews was elected United States Senator in 
place of John Sherman, who had resigned to become Secretary of the 
Treasury, and the following year was promoted to the Supreme Bench. 
Although strongly opposed in the Senate, because of the views he was 
supposed to entertain towards corporations, the most eminent of his 
critics, standing by his bier, had the candor to state that his opinions 
and his assent to those delivered by other judges upon that class of 
questions had convinced him as well as other Senators that they were 
mistaken in doubting his judicial capacity and independence. Upright 
and candid, a helpful and sympathizing friend of the younger members 
of the bar, fair and just in logic, rich in legal learning, clear in statement, 
gentle in disposition, affable in conduct, patient and attentive, he won, 
during the seven years of his judicial service, the respect of his associates, 
the confidence of the bar, and gave each year fresh assurance of continued 
growth and predominance. His death elicited the most eloquent and 
affectionate eulogies from political opponents as well as friends. His 
opinions evince research and care, and at times he dissented most vigor- 
oursly from the doctrines established by the judgment of the majority 
of the court—the most noticeable instance being in the well-known 
case of Kring v.. Missouri (107 U. S., 221, 1882), in which he protested 
against an extension of the constitutional principle of forbidding expost 
facto laws as would result in the escape of a convicted murderer, when, as 
he contended, the substance of the prisoner’s defence upon the merits 
had not been touched; where no vested legal right under the law had 
vTought a result upon his legal condition before its repeal.” 

—^History of the Supreme Court of the U. S.’ by Hampton L. 

Carson, {1891), k8S-k. 



THADDEUS STEVENS (1793-1868), Pennsylvania 


THADDEUS STEVENS’ EPITAPH 

“I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural prefer¬ 
ence for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited by charter rules as 
to race, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles 
which I advocated through a long life—equality of man before his Creator.”, 
— Thaddeus Stevens. The Humble Cemetery was chosen because the 
Aristocratic ones forbid persons of color to be interred therein. 

CONTEMPT OF COURT 

“Do you intend to express your contempt for this Court,” said the 
Judge to Thaddeus Stevens. “Express my contempt for this Court! 
Why, I was trying to conceal it,” replied Stevens. 

A WORLD OF PROGRESS 

“What is this world but a world of progress? And what is the states¬ 
man worth who is afraid to fight in the front ranks? The liberty of the 
world is not yet effected. Half the world is yet in chains, half the world 
is yet under kingly government. We must go ahead, and, though I 
can do but little, I shall do what I can; and if, when I am dead, there 
sprouts any vigor from my bones and my grave to help forward posterity, 
to proclaim the same doctrines of universal liberty and unviersal suffrage 
and universal disenthrallment from kings, I shall be satisfied. The 
Goddess of Liberty is represented in ancient statues as a very nice god¬ 
dess, but very small. I want her to grow, to put on the habiliments of 
mature age, until she can embrace within her folds every nation and every 
tribe, and every human being within God’s canopy, I care not what 
you say of radicalism; these are my principles, and with the help of God, 
I shall die with them. I ask no epitaph, I shall have none; but I shall go 
with a pure consciousness of having tried to serve the whole human race, 
and never injured a human being.” 

TRIBUTE TO HIS MOTHER 

“I really think the greatest pleasure of my life resulted from my ability 
to give my mother a farm of 250 acres, a dairy of fourteen cows, an occas¬ 
ional bright gold piece, which she loved to deposit on the contributor’s 
box of the Baptist church which she attended. She was an extraordinary 
woman. I have met very few women like her. My father was not a 
well-to-do man, and the support and education of the family depended 
upon her. She worked day and night to educate me. I was feeble and 
lame in youth, and as I could not work on the farm, she gave me an 
education. I tried to repay her afterwards, but the debt of a child to 
his mother, you know, is one of the debts we can never pay.” 

— S. W. McCall’s Life of Stevens, 89. 

ESCAPADE AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 

Stevens graduated from Dartmouth in 1814, and while at college, he 
and another student killed a trespasing cow, which frequented the 
college campus. It was laid to an innocent student, who was about 
to be expelled, as the owner demanded satisfaction. At this juncture, 
Stevens and his comrade rose to the occasion, and confessed, and the 


670 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


owner forgave them, refused to expose them or take compensation. 
Many years afterwards, Stevens sent him a draft for more than the value 
of the cow, and a gold watch and chain.— McCall’s Life of Stevens, 17-18. 

TRIED FIFTY MURDER CASES 

During his late life, Stevens said he had been counsel for the prisoner 
in more than fifty murder cases, in all of which but one he had been 
successful, but that every defendant had deserved conviction, except 
the one who was hanged. That one he said was insane. He received a 
$1500 fee in his first case, the one in which he made the defense of insanity, 
and lost.— McCall’s Life, 25-6. 

A SPONTANEOUS JOKER 

“He rarely told a story; but two men, perhaps, so entirely different 
in character as Stevens and Lincoln, never threw off more spontaneous 
jokes. Stevens was strong in repartee, in retort, in quiet inte^ogatory. 
He must have been terrible at the cross-examination of a witness.“ 

— Forney’s Anecdotes of Piihlic Men, 37. 

APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE 

John Hickman called upon Stevens when upon his deathbed, felt the 
grip of the grim messenger fastening on him, told the Old Man he was 
looking weU. “Oh, John! it is not my appearance, but my disappearance 
that troubles me,” was his answer. 

MADE A FORTUNE AFTER FIFTY 

At the age of fifty years, through the operations of a partner in the 
iron business, he found himself more than $200,000 in debt. He retired 
temporarily from politics, removed from Gettysburg to Lancaster, Pa., 
where he lived during his professional and political life, a bachelor, as 
he never married. Alexander Hood, one of nine students in his office at 
one time, says his debts, in 1843, amounted to $217,000; in six years he 
reduced them to $30,000. In the first session of the Supreme Court of 
the State, at Harrisburg, he was counsel in four of the six cases which 
came up from his county: the next year, in six of the eight cases. His 
practice was from $12,000 to $15,000 a year. 

ALEX K. McCLURE’S TESTIMONY 

“I have heard and seen all the leading men of the Pennsylvania Bar, 
who were contemporary vdth Mr. Stevens, and I regarded him as the 
most accomplished all round lawyer we had in the State. He was thor¬ 
oughly grounded in the fundamental principles of the law; was thoroughly 
familiar with cases, at home and abroad; was perfect in practice, elicited 
testimony from witnesses better than any man I have ever heard in court, 
and was one of the most skilful advocates that ever addressed a jury. 
I was engaged with other counsel against him in the first important 
case I ever tried after my admission to the bar, and felt much embarrass¬ 
ment in having so accomplished an antagonist; but he was one of the 
most courteous men in the trial of a case, whether engaged with or against 
him, and especially to the younger members of the bar that I have ever 
met. His invective, that was most wisely employed in the trial of cases, 
was terrible, and the member of the bar who undertook to transcend 
the line of propriety was certain to pay dearly for his audacity; but he 
was thoroughly manly and generous to all who merited such treatment. 


GREAT SAYIKGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


671 


I have known many of our great. lawyers who were great advocates, 
but he is the only man I recall, who was eminent in all the attributes 
of a great lawyer.”— From letter, Nov. 15, 1898. 

NATIONAL BANK NOTES 

“To the banks I can see the advantage. They would have the whole 
benefit of the circulation Avithout interest, and at the same time, would 
draw interest on the government bond.” — McCalVs Life of Stevens, 91^. 

THE THINGS EXPRESSED IN THE CONSTITUTION 

“If notMng could be done by Congress except what is enumerated in 
the Constitution, the government could not live a week.” 

CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE 

“With a national credit almost destroyed, with property values greatly 
lessened, and with half the men of military age in the field in a civil war, 
twenty millions of people were called upon in four years to meet an 
expenditure of $3,500,000,000 ($175 for each person) and they showed 
themselves able to respond to the gigantic demand. The achievement 
not only stands without a parallel, but it stands unapproached. The 
credit was not chiefly due to leadership. What was demanded of the 
leaders was the ability to comprehend capacity and the fervent patriotism 
of the people. But the one man who is as much entitled as any other, 
with the exception of the Secretary of the Treasury, to the glory of these 
financial achieA-ements was the Chairman of the Ways and Means, and 
the leader of the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens.” 

—Samvel McCall, Life of Stevens, 180-1. 

CIVIL OR PUBLIC WAR—THE LAW 

“Stevens then put the question whether the struggle was to be regarded 
as a ‘public war,’ under the rules of civihzed warfare, or ‘only a domestic 
insurrection before the courts of the country?’ If it was an insurrection, 
then the insurgents had a right to ‘the protection of the Constitution and 
municipal laws.’ If it was a public war, ‘then, they are subject to the 
laws of war alone.’ He then cited Vattel to show that, when a republic 
broken into two armed factions, ‘this is called civil war;’ that, although a 
sovereign might call all who resisted him rebels, yet if they had strength 
enough to oblige him to carry on war, according to the established rules, he 
must submit to the term civil war, and that in such a case the combatants 
‘stand in precisely the same predicament as two nations who engage in 
a contest.’ ‘Could anyone,’ he asked, ‘deny to a contest of the magnitude 
of the rebellion the term “civil war ?” ’ The powers of Europe had recognized 
the Southern States as belhgerents. What was even more conclusive, 
‘with unfortunate haste we blockaded their ports,’ and thereby ourselves 
aclmowledged their belligerency. We ‘had treated their captive soldiers 
as prisoners of war’, exchanged prisoners, and sent flags of truce. ‘This 
is not the usage awarded to an unorganized banditti.’ If public war 
existed, then it was clear that no compacts, laws and paper and obliga¬ 
tions could be relied upon by the South against the North. The argument 
was in entire harmony with that to which he adhered to the end. He was 
unquestionably a great lawyer. It is impossible to read his speeches 
upon questions of a legal character and not appreciate the grounds for 
the tribute said to have been paid to him by another great lawyer and a 
political foe. Judge Jeremiah S. Black, when he said: 

“ ‘At the time of his death he had no equal as a lawyer at the American 
Bar ’ ” — The Green Bag, Vol. S, 200; also McCaWs Life of Stevens, 201-2. 


672 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE NEGRO 

“I do not expect to see the day when in a ‘Christian land merit shall 
counterbalance the crime of color;’ but I propose to give them an equal 
chance to meet death upon the battlefield. * * * The only place 

where they can find equality is in the grave. There all God’s children are 
equal.” 

SIMON CAMERON—RED-HOT STOVE 

Said Lincoln to Stevens,—the latter did not like Simon Cameron—“You 
don’t mean to say that Cameron would steal?” queried Lincoln. “No,” 
answered Stevens, “I don’t think he would steal a red-hot stove.” Lincoln 
thought this too good to keep, and told Cameron what Stevens had said. 
Cameron took umbrage and his fellow State Republican comrade to 
task. Stevens retracted in these words: “I believe I told Lincoln that 
I did not think you would steal a red-hot stove. I now take that back.” 

—McCalVs Life of Stevens, 311-12. 

MILEAGE FOR A SPEECH 

To a member of the House of Representatives, who was gesticulating, 
walking up and down the aisle, and back and forth across the area, he 
called out: 

“Do you expect to get mileage for that speech?” 

FEEBLE REMARKS OF AN INTRUDER 

To a humble member of Congress, who was always indicting, neverthe¬ 
less, speeches upon the House, and who asked Stevens to yield him time 
to make a speech upon a certain measure, he said: “I now yield to Mr. 
-who wiU make a few feeble remarks.” 

THE ANDREW JOHNSON IMPEACHMENT 

“It was upon the motion of Mr. Stevens that a committee of two was 
appointed to appear at the bar of the Senate and impeach President 
Johnson. Stevens was made chairman of this committee, as he was the 
acknowledged leader in Congress. He was a member of the committee 
to prepare articles of impeachment, and also one of the managers to present 
the case to the Senate. And probably would have been selected as the 
leading manager, but for his age, seventy-four years, and physical condi¬ 
tion. He made the most lawyer-like argument presented on his side of 
the cause. After standing for a few minutes, his strength gave out, and 
he was forced to resume his chair. He spoke for nearly half an hour from 
his seat, when his voice became inaudible, and the reading was concluded 
by General Benj. F. Butler. This was in April, 1868, less than four months 
before his death.”— Samuel McCall, in Life of Stevens, 343. 

BENEFITS OF AN EDUCATION 

“What earthly glory is there equal in lustre and duration to that 
conferred by education?”— From speech in favor of Free Schools. 

UNIVERSAL EDUCATION 

“So cast your votes that the blessing of education shall be conferred on 
every son of Pennsylvania shall be carried home to the poorest child 
of the poorest inhabitant of the meanest hut of your mountains, so that 
even he may be prepared to act well his part in this land of freedom 
and lay on earth a broad and solid foundation for that enduring knowledge 
which goes on increasing through increasing eternity.”— Idem. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


673 


JAMES ALBERT WOODBURN’S TRIBUTE 

“He is the greatest man, save one (Franklin), who ever hved within 
the borders of Pennsylvania.”— Woodhurn's Life of Stevens, 


PAID $800 FOR A SLAVE’S FREEDOM 

While on his way to Baltimore to buy law-books he interceded in 
behalf of a crying colored woman, at the hotel where he stopped in 
Maryland, that he should do something to save her husband who was t6 
be sold. Stevens interposed, and paid $800, the price, but returned to 
Gettysburg, where he then lived, as he was unable after this expenditure 
to proceed, or to buy the coveted books. 

—As related by Godlove S. Orth, of Indiana, who grew up in Gettys¬ 
burg. ^Woodburn's Life of Stevens,' 56. 

REPORTING HIS SPEECH 

“Giving his words as a report of his speech, without his overwhelming, 
crushing looks, seems like pointing to a shivered tree as a description of a 
thunder-storm.”— Rev. Jonathan Blanchard. 

HIS POWER, MONEY, ETC. 

“It was these qualities, firmness of purpose, clearness of vision and the 
absence of doubt and fear, that enabled him to overcome his inconsistent 
and more wavering Republican colleagues. He lost about $90,000 by 
Confederate invasion and destruction of his iron works in Caladonia, 
Pa., in 1863, almost the entire savings of his life. He came to believe 
in a uniform national currency, issued as bills of credit by the general 
government alone. ‘Money is the creature of law,’ he said, ‘just what 
the law makes it.’ He had come to the faith that the government has 
the constitutional power to make money of whatever material it chooses, 
whether metal, paper, leather, tin, nickel, greenbacks, or old bones. 
The material does not matter, except for convenience. It is quality and 
use that count. If money is too abundant or too scarce, it is of no con¬ 
sequence whether it be coin or paper. One thousand million too much 
of gold is just as injurious in infiating prices as one thousand million 
too much greenbacks. And he desired that the volume of money be 
regulated by a sovereign representative government in the interests of 
the toilers and producers, and not by combinations of capitalists con¬ 
trolling the gold of the world in the interests of the moneyed classes.” 
— Woodhurn's Life, 582. 

PROVISIONS OP HIS WILL 

He provided that Thaddeus W. Stevens, of Indianapolis, Ind., a nephew, 
should be paid by the trustees one-fourth of all his property, if at the end 
of five years he had totally abstained from all intoxicating drinks, to which 
he was addicted; if at the end of the next five years, he had so abstained, 
another one-fourth; and, if at the end of another five years, he was to 
have the whole property in fee simple. Here was a lesson in temperance, 
but the nephew was not able to bear it. He was not able to qualify for 
his inheritance, and in that event, the remaining aggregate property, 
was to go ‘to erect, establish and endow a house of refuge for the relief of 
homeless orphans, and $20,000 was to be expended in building and the 
orphans were to be provided a home till fifteen years of age, and longer, 
if infirm.’— Woodburn’s Life of Stevens, 588. 


674 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


A POOR COMMISSIONER 

“Certainly,” said Stevens, who was solicited to vote for an impecunious 
and incompetent Poor Commissioner; “We should make you Poor Com¬ 
missioner, for I know of no one in all Lancaster county who would make 
a poorer commissioner than you!” 

GIDEON WELLES ON STEVENS 

* “Thad Stevens has genius and audacity, but not wisdom; imagination, 
but not sagacity; cunning, but not principle; will ruin his party or country, 
doubtless injure both .”—2 Welles Diary, 626. 

WOODBURN’S TRIBUTE 

“There was no doubt nobility and greatness in Stevens’ character. 
He brought to his country’s service learning and eloquence, firmness of 
will, directness and tenacity of purpose, the noblest courage, and a fine 
and consuming scorn and contempt for evasion andjisqirocrisy and the 
low arts of political tricksters. He was an unrelenting foe to every form 
of tyranny over the minds of men. He was a man of great mind and clear 
vision, to a degree quite rare among men, and, what is rarer still, he had 
the courage to assert his mind and follow his vision, the time-server and 
the trimmer stepped aside to let him pass. Amid the greatest changes 
that ever occurred in any decade of our national life, facing the detraction 
of enemies, the timidity of friends, the corruption and tyranny of power, 
and the cowardice of party, he stood with Puritan and Spartan firmness for 
a definite end, the goal of equity and justice that had been fixed for him 
by his unwavering democratic faith. Indifferent to praise or blame, 
where his cause was at stake; unmoved by considerations of rank, title, 
wealth or position, selfish motives did not animate his public conduct. 
The selfishness that was in him as it is in all men was not of the mean 
and miserly kind. While seeking his own interest and his own end in 
private life he would not defraud and oppress his neighbor. His selfishness 
in public life also was of the noblest kind. While he frequently sought 
place and power, not in honor preferring others, but crushing them, or 
pushing them aside, sometimes with seeming meanness, sacr^cing his 
friends; and while, in natural vanity, he was possessed of a strong love 
of prominence and public praise, yet he pursued his ends and sought 
place and power not chiefly for his own glory, but that he might elevate 
his country and lift up the mass of downtrodden humanity wMch he saw 
around him. 

“He was not a saint by any means; but like Cromwell, who was in 
many ways his prototype, he was ready to be painted as he was. ‘I am 
just what I am whether you like me or not,’ he said. In spite of the defects 
of his character, and they were many, it seems clear to those who study 
his life that the motives and aims that impelled him to speak and fight 
and labor and spend himself for his cause were not mean and selfish. 
His detractors were generally little men of conventional opinion, without 
vision or the spirit that would lead them to battle and sacrifice for a 
cause; Stevens, on the other hand, was a man of large mold and of great 
purposes, who was striving with his whole soul to carve other and better 
channels for the life of society, pursuing steadily, without variation of 
shadow or of turning, the two great purposes of his public life, the unity 
of the nation and the freedom of the slave. 

“ ‘He was undoubtedly, all things considered,’ says Mr. Forney, 
‘the ablest parliamentary leader of Ms time. Tall in stature (five feet 
and eleven inches), deliberate in utterance and in gesticulation, and with 
a massive head and features so remarkable that no one who saw Mm once 
could ever forget him, Ms whole presence conveyed the idea of dignity 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


675 


and force. His forehead was uncommonly high and broad, liis features 
were bold and striking, his brows projecting and his cavernous eyes bright 
and piercing and full of expression. He was simple and direct in conversa¬ 
tion, and when he listened he looked, as it were, into the very soul of 
the talker, piercing through duplicity and laying bare deceit.’ 

“In the chief cemeteries of Lancaster it was stipulated by charter 
that no person of color should be interred therein. Stevens had lots in 
both cemeteries, but he sent back the deeds, preferring to be laid to rest 
in Shreiner’s cemetery, a private and humble burying-ground, not far 
from the centre of Lancaster and near one of the public schools. There 
on a worthy monument, erected to his memory, the visitor may see these 
characteristic words, composed for his epitaph by the Great Democratic 
Commoner himself: 

“ ‘I repose in this quiet and secluded spot. 

Not frorn any natural preference for solitude. 

But finding other cemeteries limited by charter rules as to race, 
I have chosen this, that I might illustrate in my death 
The principles which I advocated through a long life: 

Equality of man before his Creator.’ 

“He died as he lived, the relentless foe of privilege, the uncompro¬ 
mising advocate of democracy, of equal rights for all, special privileges 
for none, beneath the law. T know not what record of sin awaits me in 
the other world, but this I know, that I have never been guilty of despis¬ 
ing a man because he was poor, because he was ignorant, or because he 
was black.’ These words fitly apply to the life and character of Thaddeus 
Stevens. Before all else, he stood for hberty and the equal rights of men. 
To this faith he bore his consistent testimony from early life to the open 
grave and beyond. No truer democrat, no abler advocate of popular 
rights, ever stood in American legislative halls.” 

—James Albert Woodhurn, in his Life of Stevens, 607-10. 

BECAME GREATER UPON ACQUAINTANCE 

An eminent Congressman has said, “that Thaddeus Stevens was the 
only man he ever knew who loomed larger upon coming in contact with 
him.” 

TPIADDEUS STEVENS ON SLAVERY 

“Sir, for myself, I should look on any Northern man, enlightened by a 
Northern education, who would, directly or indirectly, by omission or 
commission, by basely voting or cowardly skulking, permit slavery to 
spread over one rood of God’s free earth, as a traitor to liberty and recre¬ 
ant to his God. * * * I entertain no ill-will toward any human 

being, nor brutes that I know of, not even the skunk across the way, 
to whom I just referred. Least of all would I reproach the South. I 
honor her courage and fidehty. Even in a bad, a wicked cause, she shows 
a united front. All her sons are faithful to the cause of human bondage, 
because it is their cause. But the North—the poor timid, mercenary, 
driveling North—has no such united defenders of her cause, although it 
is the cause of human liberty. None of the bright fights of the nation 
shine upon her section. Even our great men have turned her accusers. 
She is the victim of low ambition—an ambition that prefers self to country, 
personal aggrandizement to the high cause of human liberty. She is 
offered up a sacrifice to propitiate Southern tyranny, to conciliate South¬ 
ern treason. * * * So now in this crisis of the fate of liberty, if any 

of the renowried men of the nation should betray her Pause, it were better 
that they had been unknown to fame. It need not be hoped that the 
brightness of their past glory will dazzle the eyes of posterity or illumine 


(576 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the pages of impartial history. A few of its rays may linger on a fading 
sky, but they will soon be whelmed in the blackness of darkness. For 
unless progressive civilization and the increasing love of freedom through¬ 
out the Christian and civilized world are fallacious, the Sun of Liberty, 
of universal liberty, is already above the horizon and fast coursing to 
his meridian splendor, when no advocate of slavery, no apologist of 
slavery, can look upon his face and live.” (The latter part of this speech 
alluded to Webster’s seventh of March speech.) — Thaddeus Stevens. 


THE SUPREME COURT OF THE U. S., UNDER MARSHALL 

“Thus the national judiciary (under Chief Justice Marshall) became 
the keystone of the arch supporting the new political edifice and was 
invested with the most absolute and far-reaching authority. Since 
all legislative and executive action can in some way be put in issue in a 
suit, it is an authority often involving and controlling matters of high 
state policy, external as well as internal. At this very moment is it not 
believed, indeed proclaimed in high quarters, that the question of Asiatic 
dependencies for the United States and incidentally of the foreign policy 
generally, practically hinges upon judgments of the national Supreme 
Court in cases requiring the exercise of its function as the final interpreter 
of the Constitution? What judicial tribunal in Christendom is or ever 
has been, directly or indirectly, the arbiter of issues of that character? 

“It was a national judiciary of this sort of which John Marshall became 
the head one hundred years ago. That he dominated his court on all 
constitutional questions is indubitable. That he exercised his mastery 
with marvelous sagacity and tact, that he manifested a profound compre¬ 
hension of the principles of our constitutional government and declared 
them in terms unrivaled for their combination of simplicity and exact¬ 
ness, that he justified his judgments by reasoning impregnable in point 
of logic and irresistible in point of persuasiveness—has not all this been 
universally conceded for the two generations since his death and will it 
not be found to have been universally voiced today wherever throughout 
the land this century has been observed? ‘All wrong,’ said John Randolph 
of one of Marshall’s opinions, ‘All wrong—but no man in the United 
States can tell why or wherein he is wrong.’ ” 

—Richard Olney of Boston, Mass., attorney-general and afterwards 
Secretary of State in Cleveland's Cabinet, delivered in Boston, before 
Boston Bar Ass'n, Feb. J, 1901. He left a $50,000 yearly law 
practice to take a cabinet position. 


WEBSTER ON POLITICAL ECONOMY 

“Though I like the investigation of particular questions, I give up what 
is called the science of political economy. There is no such science. 
There are no rules on these subjects so fixed and invariable that their 
aggregate constitutes a science. I believe I have recently run over twenty 
volumes, from Adam Smith to Professor Dew; and from the whole, if 
I were to pick out with one hand all mere truisms, and with the other all 
the doubtful propositions, little would be left.” 

— Harvey's ^Reminiscences of Daniel Webster,' 201)., 




EMORY A. STORKS (1833-1885), Illinois 

ACQUISITIVENESS 

Retort to a N. Y. banker, sojourning with Storrs at Saratoga Springs, 
^ - Y., from whom Storrs requested a loan of $50 to take a quick train 
to Chicago to defend a friend who offered him a $10,000 fee to get him 
out of trouble, Storrs saying to the banker that as soon as he got to 
Chicago, he would return him the money. But the banker proceeded 
to give him a lecture on thrift, etc., when the great advocate retorted: 

“Money-making is not an intellectual process, and those who acquire 
wealth are not a superior kind of men. There is nothing intellectual 
about acquisitiveness. It is less highly developed in the rich man than 
in the chipmunk. The beaver is much superior in this regard. Where 
are the rich men of history ? There are two only who live in the legends 
of literature. Dives, who survives on account of his former connection 
with a pauper, and Croesus, because his name has been used by poets 
merely as a synonym. Where are the stockholders who built the Parth¬ 
enon? Doubtless, in their day, they stood around Athens and spoke 
of the fine work Phidias was doing for them. But where are they today, 
and where is Phidias, the architect?” 

APOSTROPHE TO WATER 

(The following is an extemporaneous speech made by Storrs in St. 
Louis, Mo., at the Lindell Hotel, to^ congratulating circle largely com¬ 
posed of members of the local Bar. Storrs had been successful in defend¬ 
ing General Babcock for his complicity in the “Whiskey Steal.” The 
case was tried in the U. S. District Court in that city. The eminent 
Chicago lawyer, whose failing was imbibing a httle too freely, was urged 
to take “something stimulating,” as no man could get eloquent over 
water; and then he was challenged to make a temperance speech, when 
he mounted a chair, called for a glass of water, and gave them the fol¬ 
lowing): 

“How do you expect to improve upon the beverage furnished by Nature? 
Here it is—Adam’s ale — about the only gift that has descended unde¬ 
filed from the Garden of Eden! Nature’s common carrier—not created 
in the rottenness of fermentation, not distilled over guilty fires 1 Virtues 
and not vices are its companions. Does it cause drunkenness, disease, 
death, cruelty to women and children? Will it place rags on the person, 
mortgages on the stock, farm, and furniture? Will it consume wages 
and income in advance and ruin men in business? No! but it fioats 
in white gossamer clouds far up in the quiet, summer sky, and hovers 
in dreamy mist over the merry faces of all our sparkling lakes. It veils 
the woods and hills of earth’s landscapes in a purple haze, where filmy 
lights and shadows drift, hour after hour. It piles itself in tumbled 
cloud-domes and thunder heads, draws the electric fiash from its myste¬ 
rious hiding places and seams and shocks the wide air with vivid lines of 
fire. It is carried by land winds, and falls in rustling curtains of liquid 
drapery over all the thirsty woods and fields, and fixes in God’s mystic 
eastern heavens His beautiful bow of promise, glorified with a radiance 
that seems reflected out of heaven itself. It gleams in the forest crystals 
of the myriad forests of the world, and tints each fruit and flower. It 
is here in the grass blades of the meadows, and there where the corn 
waves its tassels, and the wheat is billowing! It gems the depths of the 
desert with the glad, green oasis, winds itself in oceans around the earth, 
and roars in hoarse, eternal anthems on a hundred thousand miles of 


678 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


coast! It claps its hands in the flashing wave crests of the sea, laughs 
in the little rapids of the brooks, kisses the dripping, moss-covered, 
old oaken well-buckets in a countless host of happy homes! See these 
pieces of cracked ice, full of prismatic colors, clear as diamonds! Listen 
to their fairy tinkle against the brimming glass, that sweetest music 
in all the world to one half fainting with thirst! And so, in the language 
of that grand old man, Gough, I ask you, brothers all, would you ex¬ 
change that sparkhng glass of water for alcohol—the drink of the very 
devil himself?” 

^ STATP] SOVEREIGNTY 

“The Republican party believes that this government is a union 
of the people, and not a compact of States. It believes that these States 
are not like a lot of marbles in a bag, which touch but do not adhere, 
but though ‘distinct like the billows are one like the sea.’ For half a 
century or more, we argued this question on the stump, in Congress, 
and in the courts. We won in all these places. Not satisfled with the 
decision, the same men who now howl about ‘centralization’ submitted 
the question to that tribunal of last resort, from which no appeal can be 
taken, the arbitrament of war. They were again ^ beaten. It cost us 
three thousand millions of money, five hundred thousand lives, and over 
four years of war to win, on that trial. I am opposed to a re-trial. Enough 
of money and enough of lives have already been wasted on the settle¬ 
ment of that question; and no such thin disguise as ‘local self-government’ 
will ever seduce us into the re-opening of that subject.” 

—From a speech in Springfield, 111., in the Grant-Greeley Campaign, 

1872. 

DEMOCRATIC PARTY COMPARED TO THE PRODIGAL SON 

“It takes but a very few days contact with the Democracy to stain 
the white and spotless garment of Republicanism. They mistake a 
great scriptural story, Mr. Chairman. The air is full of devotion. I 
feel a good deal like talking Scripture, myself. They are misled by the 
story of the Prodigal Son. They seem to think that the parable was 
told as an invitation for young men to go off and be prodigals. It was 
not told for any such purpose. The Prodigal made nothing whatever 
out of the experiment. He took what money belonged to him, and went 
away, foolishly, as other young men have done. He fell among the 
Democrats, and was naturally cleaned out. And when his money was 
gone, and his clothes gone, and his credit gone, the Democrats of that 
day had no further use for him. He went into the swine business, Mr. 
Chairman, as I read it. He went to feed swine, and the swine were dis¬ 
couraged; and then he went to feeding with swine, and they turned 
him out, and it was hard times with the poor, young. Independent 
Prodigal. And without clothes enough to wad a gun, he started for 
home. The point comes right here: how much did the Prodigal make 
out of that enterprise? The good, dear, old father, looking down that 
dusty turnpike, expecting the boy back ultimately, and seeing him 
coming, threw himself around his neck and welcomed him. And what 
did he give him? He did not give him back any of the farm; he did not 
give him an office—^no, not the smell of an office. The Prodigal had 
too much good sense to ask for one. All he cared for was to be taken 
in as a hired servant. And what that father gave him was a new suit 
of clothes, and a ring on his finger, and a veal dinner—a fatted calf. 
That contribution has always been overestimated. Everybody was 
engaged in raising calves—calves were long. And the boy who 
staid at home, did not quite relish this uproar, on account of this sore¬ 
eyed Prodigal, and he turned to his father, with some complaint; but his 
father said —‘don’t complain, son, you’re always with me; all that I have 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


679 


is thine.’ Not a cent of money, not a foot of ground, not an office was 
given to the Prodigal; but the boy who staid at home, had it all. Now, 
I do hope that my Independent friends won’t wait—that they won’t 
tarry. My friends down there in New York. You can never occupy a 
mansion, the dome of which glitters with stars, and is as broad as the 
very heavens. Come back to the old mansion. It is capable of enter¬ 
taining the fifty millions of good, earnest, patriotic people of this nation. 
Come back to it. After all the decayed timbers of decayed chattelhood 
have been removed, and we have supplied their places with the ever¬ 
lasting granite of universal freedom, come back to it—with its glorious 
inscriptions written and emblazoned upon its walls, no longer devastated 
by the fugitive slave-law; no longer befouled and besmirched, by the 
inscriptions of the Dred Scott case. Come back with the 14th and 15th 
Amendments, that glitter like shining planets from the white and stain¬ 
less walls.”— Speech in the Hayes-Tilden Campaign, 1876. 

A CROSS-EXAMINATION—TO ELICIT NOTHING DAMAGING 

(A Mr. B. B. Bulwinkle, Chief of the Fire Patrol, of Chicago, had 
been examined, in chief, for the prosecution; stating that he arrived 
upon the scene of the burning building; found evidence of incendiarism— 
shavings, and other highly combustible substances, saturated with kero¬ 
sene, and many burnt matches, around the center of the room, where the 
fire started, which, it was quite apparent, were put there by the prisoner, 
whom Storrs was defending. His evidence was so positive, straight-for¬ 
ward, and damaging that defendant’s counsel saw to cross-examine him, 
upon the facts, would be but to emphasize it, and convict his client. 
The following, therefore, was the method pursued); 

Q. What is your name, did you say, sir? 

A. My name is Bullwinkle. 

Q. Yes, sir. What is your given name, Mr. Bullwinkle? 

A. Benjamin. 

Q. Benjamin Bullwinkle! yes. Have you any middle name, Mr. 
Bullwinkle ? 

A. Yes, sir: my middle name is Butterworth. 

Q. Benjamin Butterworth Bullwinkle! What did you say your 
official position is? 

A. I am Chief of the Fire Patrol. 

Q. Of the City of Chicago? 

A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Yes, sir. Well, Mr. Benjamin Butterworth Bullwinkle, Chief of 
the Fire Patrol, of the City of Chicago, Cook County, State of Illinois, 
I belive that will be all. 

TERSE SAYINGS BY STORRS 

“The independent movement is like the trip of the blind ass in a park. 
Very much walking and very little getting ahead.”—(Bo^^on, 1881 ^). 

“One custom-house officer notified the committee of his submission to 
the royal will, by saying, that he had fourteen reasons for obeying his 
Majesty’s commands—a wife and thirteen young children.” 

— {Portland, Me., 1868). 

“General Grant has grown through the mists and the clouds of defa¬ 
mation, and while those fogs may envelope his feet, his head is in the 
sunshine. Clouds and mists gather round the base of the mountain,^ 
but the summit is away above storm and cloud—is in brightness itself.” 

—From letter to Benj. H. Brewster, 1880. 


680 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


(Alluding to the platfrom of the Democratic party of 1868, in his 
Cleveland, 0. speech, in the campaign of 1880, after quoting,—“Should 
it, the Republican Party, succeed in November next, and inaugurate 
the President, in the coming March, we shall meet as a subdued and 
conquered people, amid the ruins of liberty, and the scattered fragments 
of the Constitution. The pillars of the government are already rocking 
on their base, etc.,’’ Mr. Storrs turned around to the Chairman and the 
Band, and said:— 

“Let the band please play a funeral march,’’ and added: 

“Have you seen any trouble with the pillars of the .Government? 
The trouble was not with the pillars of the government: they did not 
rock; the trouble was with the gentlemen who were looking at the pillars 
of the government. They were like the fellow who had been attending 
a lecture on astronomy. Going home loaded with a great deal of Demo¬ 
cratic logic, with a step, weary and uncertain, with the earth revolving 
a great many times upon its axis, he affectionately clasped a lamp post, 
and said: ‘Old Gahleo was right about it after all: the world does move’.’’ 

RETORT TO A WITNESS 

To a witness, with whom, Mr. Storrs had had an understanding that 
he would testify a certain way, and who went on the stand, and swore 
directly opposite (a ground for a new trial, by the way), the following 
dialogue took place:— 

Q. “So, that is your testimony, is it, Mr. Jones?’’ 

A. “Yes, sir. I have more respect for the truth than I have for you!” 

Q. That’s right; but you ought not to forsake an old friend, for an 
entire stranger, at your time in life.” 

APHORISMS 

“You cannot repeal an accomplished fact, any more than you can repeal 
yesterday’s sunbeam.” 

“An Independent in politics is in the position of an ox just half jumped 
over the fence—utterly worthless either for aggressive or defensive 
j)urposes.”— {Boston, 188Jf). 

“New York City stands like the angel of the Apocalypse, with one foot 
resting upon the sea, and the other upon the land, the mistress of both.” 

— {Chicago, 188Jf..) 

/ “Andrew Johnson’s administration was a leaden boat, with iron sails, 

/ the devil for a pilot, the wrath of God for a breeze, and hell for the nearest 
\ port.” 

Being told that it hurt him to meet the truth. “Oh, no,” was Storr’s 
quick rejoinder, “I never meet the truth —it and I always travel in the 
same direction.” 

Being twitted of recklessness in money matters, he retorted: “Money! 
If I should try to save it, I should become its slave. Now, it is my weapon. 
When I fling it at people, they become slaves of mine.” 

“I like a big thing—a power—no matter how crude or raw it may be 
in its exhibition. Indeed, so saturated am I with the Chicago spirit that 
I would be glad to shake hands with the force of gravity, if it could 
take material form. I would go farther to see the force of gravity than 
I would to see the greatest man on earth.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


681 


A TARIFF SPEECH * 

“Now, my fellow citizens, I have seen the workings, in a narrow portion 
of the country, of the doctrine of free trade. I visited the State of Cali¬ 
fornia, two or three weeks ago. I am familiar with the logic of free trade; 
I used to believe in it. There is no literature in the world so captivating 
to a young man, as that of free trade, but a little more reading, and a 
little more thinking, on my own account, and a good deal more experience, 
demonstrated to me, that it would not work. I remember that the 
millennium of free trade doctrine is ‘a cheap product,’ and when a free 
trader argues with you and gets so far as to demonstrate that his policy 
will result in a cheap product, he thinks the debate is closed. The fact is, 
it is only just begun. What this government was organized for, was not 
cheap cotton, but was: intelligent, industrious, well-to-do citizens. I 
am probably heterodox, but I think a great deal more of a prosperous 
laboring man than I do of a cheap boot, and the policy of protection, in 
the end, gives us both, and everybody is t)eneflted by it. 

The City of San Francisco ought to be the very Elysium of free trade. 
Boots are cheap; the Chinaman makes them. Underwear is cheap; 
the Chinaman makes it. Tinware is very cheap; the Chinaman makes 
them. Cigars are cheap; Chinaman makes them. Is San Francisco 
prosperous? Is Cahfornia prosperous? California is the only great state 
in this Union that shows a decrease of population and prosperity in 
the last two years (speech made in Cleveland, 1880). San Francisco is 
the only great city in the Union that has reduced its capital, its business 
and population since 1876. What is the trouble? You have a cheap pro¬ 
duct. It is the result of a degraded and pauperized labor. The Chinaman, 
under the cast-iron habits of 3,000 years of experience in famine and 
starvation, can work and live in a fashion that the white laborer cannot do, 
and I hope to God he may never be called upon to do. He can live on 
rats and the white laborer cannot. He pays nothing for education, 
and the white laborer does. The white laborer has a home, and the 
Chinaman has none. With all these advantages in his favor, if a white 
man competed with him, he must accept the conditions of the competi¬ 
tion. He must live and breathe and move and have his being, as his 
competitor lives and moves and has his being.”— At Cleveland, 0., 1880. 

LEGAL INSANITY 

“Legal insanity cannot exist, I think, wherever the party setting up 
insanity as a defense has sufficient of mental capacity left to discriminate 
between right and wrong—to know the difference between guilt and 
innocence—to comprehend the consequences if the act with the com¬ 
mission of which he is charged, and unable to control his own conduct. 
Now, in my judgment —and I want to suggest that to you—I don’t 
know how crazy, how insane you may conceive a man to be, if he comes 
within those limitations the law must treat him as responsible.” 

— To Chicago Homeopathic Medical College Graduates. 

DAMAGES AND RETALIATION 

Storr told Judge Sutherland, of Salt Lake City, Utah, the author of 
the leading work on damages in this country, that he had read his work 
on ‘Damages’ with interest and profit, but found nothing in his work, 
or that of any author, on the origin of damages. To which the Judge 
replied:—“Oh, yes, they do. You will find the law of damages laid down 
in the old Mosaic law, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.” “No, 
no,” retorted Storrs, “That is not damages—compensation for an injury 
sustained; that’s retaliation.” 


682 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE ANALYTICAL METHOD 

An expert real estate witness testified that ground taken by a condem¬ 
nation jury, some five years before the trial on appeal took place, was 
worth $150 per front foot, at that time, and in the latter trial, that 
it was worth five years before $200.00 per front foot. Said Storrs, 
in cross examination:— 

“What is it worth now?” (Objection—because not asking for present 
values, but the value five years before). 

The truth was, there had been a depression, and the property was not 
then worth what it was during the trial below. “But,” said Storrs, 
“this witness is offered here, as an expert, and I want to test his knowledge 
as a real estate expert.” “Go ahead,” said the Court, “if asked for that 
purpose.” A somewhat lower value was fixed, by the witness, Mr. Brown. 

Q. “Did you not try to sell for less price than the jury below gave ?” 

A. “I did not,” 

At this juncture, Storrs produced an old musty advertisement that 
Brown, as a real estate agent, had run in the Chicago Tribune, five 
years before, wherein he advertised this identical ground, at $140 per 
foot, and poking the advertisement in the face of the witness, asked:—• 

Q. “Did you insert that ad in this paper?” 

A. “Yes, I think I put that ad in the Tribune, but it had entirely 
slipped my mind.” 

Q. “Well, did you sell it?” 

A. “No, but I did not try very much.” 

Q.^ “But, you were not paying out your good money for this ad for 
nothing were you? You were endeavoring to sell it were you not?” 

A. “I think I advertised it but once.” 

Q. “You were trying to sell it for $140 per foot, were you not? And 
you now say it was worth at that time, $200 per foot. Might not one of 
the reasons be that you asked too much, even at $140?” 

(It is needless to say the testimony of this witness was completely 
destroyed, by what Storrs called ‘‘the analytical method.”) 

THE “LORD’S” SUPPER 

Storrs gave an elaborate dinner, in honor of Lord Chief Justice Cole¬ 
ridge, of England, upon the occasion of the judge’s visit to this country, 
in the autumn of 1883. The leading judges and lawyers of Chicago, 
were guests. Just as all were ready to sit down to the banquet, in came 
the sheriff of Cook County, vdth an attachment writ, to satisfy a judg¬ 
ment someone had obtained against Storrs, as he was always in debt. 
The matter was hushed up, the judgment paid by liis friends, and the 
merry-making went on. ^ When it came Storrs’ turn to speak, nothing 
daunted, he rose and said:—“I have heard many times of ‘The Lord’s 
Supper,’ but never before knew of one being levied upon for the payment 
of a debt!” 

THE EXPERT DOCTOR 

Said Storrs to an expert doctor, who had testified that “there was a 
discoloration by the extravasation of the sanguinous fluid beneath the 
cuticle,” in a boy’s arm who had been assaulted by the teacher. Said 
Storrs: 

“You mean, do you not. Doctor, that his arm was ‘black and blue?’ ” 
LAWYERS—GOOD LEGISLATORS 

“I believe, taken all in all, the lawyer makes a better legislator than the 
merchant, the banker, or the farmer. He has fewer prejudices and more 
knowledge. I am no believer in our reaching the millennium through the 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


683 


preponderance of the business man in politics. You hear a good deal 
nowadays of putting the Treasury Department and other governmental 
offices, in charge of business men, who have accumulated money. You 
cannot put your finger on the name of any great national financier, 
in this country, who has been a man of wealth. Hamilton stands at the 
liead of that class of men, and while Secretary of the Treasury, he sent one 
day letters to various parties, asking for the loan of $20. Gallatin was 
not a rich man. Hamilton was a lawyer; Solmon P. Chase was a lawyer— 
he never sold any dry-goods, nor did he engage in any mercantile business. 
It is almost proverbial that our greatest national financiers have been the 
poorest men. A national financier differs from the private merchant, 
whose essential quality is profitable management of his money, and who 
must accumulate to meet the requirement of business. A government has 
no business to accumulate any larger sums of money than it needs to 
pay its expenses. Accumulation by the government, means just that 
amount of additional taxation upon the people. The trouble with the 
lawyers is that, in many instances, they do not know enough law to be 
good lawyers, and know a little too much law to be good business men. 

“Nor do I think the lawyer is inclined to frame laws which admit of 
two interpretations. * * * We find, for instance, a good deal of difficulty 
in redundant forms of pleading. That is not the fault of the law, which 
cannot be held responsible for the dunces that fail to follow it. Clear 
heads in any profession in this world, are the exception, and such a 
facility of expression as will exclude every other meaning, excepting the 
one intended, is a facidty possessed by few mortals. I do not expect to 
live long enough to see the day when there will be such general accuracy 
of statement, in editorials, speeches, legal opinions, or statutes, as to 
avoid all chance of misunderstanding or misconstruction; yet the tendency 
of legal training is towards accuracy of statement. The lawyer can 
put an idea upon paper more clearly and precisely than a good merchant, 
a good mechanic, or a good farmer. But a clear-headed farmer is by all 
means preferable to a fuddle-headed lawyer.”— Adams' Life of Storrs, 610. 

STATE CANNOT IMPAIR THE OBLIGATION OF A CONTRACT 

“It is claimed, as we understand, that inasmuch as it is assumed that 
the legislature has the power to fix the rate of charges, imposed by a 
common carrier, where such carrier is a natural person, it must possess 
the same and equal power over a corporation, which is a being of legis¬ 
lative creation. * * * The question presented by this bill is, whether it 
impairs the obligations of a contract; and it is not what the power of the 
State may be in the exercise of its merely political functions over its citizens. 
The State has no sovereign power to impair or alter its own contracts, 
or the contracts of any one else. If the contract of the State is with an 
individual, it cannot impair it. If with a corporation, it cannot impair 
that. 

“I deem it unnecessary to discuss the metaphysical powers of govern¬ 
ments generally. It is sufficient to say that in this country, legislative 
power is limited by the fundamental law. The legislature of the State 
can pass no law impairing the obligation of a contract. This is a funda¬ 
mental principle. The legislature can deprive no freeman of his property, 
without due process of law, and that a franchise granted by a charter 
is property, is fundamental. 

“The legislature cannot assume judicial functions, and any act of that 
character, is utterly void. The question presented by this bill is—Does 
the act fall within any of the above stated limitations of legislative 
power? Any time expended in discussing what the legislature might 
do with a corporation, or an individual, to whom it was bound by no 
contract, is, we suggest, wide of the mark, and a waste of time. It 
will be sufficient to decide what a legislature may do in regulating the 


684 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


business affairs of its citizens, when that question arises. The question 
now is—What may the legislature do with reference to the rights of parties 
or corporations which it has secured to them by contracts ? If the charters 
of the railroad companies are contracts, if the right to fix tolls is a fran¬ 
chise, the bill is unconstitutional, because it seeks to deprive the com¬ 
panies of those rights. The same would be true of any private individual, 
similarly situated.” 

—Argument for the sanctity of a contract for the railroads—chiefly 
the Illinois Central R. R. Co., before Gov. John M. Palmer, in 1869, 
—the bill being from, four to three cents a m,ile 

DESCRIPTION OF R. B. HAYES 

“There stood R. B. Hayes, clad in in a long, linen duster, with a 
straw hat on the back of his head, holding in his right hand, a yellow, 
worsted bag, with the letters ‘R. B. H.’ worked in purple by Lucy. And 
no one spoke to him except a policeman, and he told him ‘to keep off the 
grass. 

A TALKATIVE FRIEND—LIKE JACKASS 

Of a well-known lawyer who possessed a propensity for talking for 
publication, and was always hunting for interviews, Mr. Storrs observed: 

“He reminds me of a jackass we had on the farm down East. He used 
to come around to the empty rain-barrel, stick his head into it and bray, 
and from the mighty roar that followed, he thought he was talking to 
the universe.” 

TALK MUCH AND SAY LITTLE 

Of a man who talked much, but said little, Storrs said: 

“He is a fellow reminding me of a suddenness, such as if you opened 
what looked like a parlor door and found all back-yard.” 

MODERATE CHARGER OF FEES 

One day, Gen. Martin Beem had Storrs in court to testify in an assess¬ 
ment of damages, for the dissolution of an injunction, and when the 
opposite counsel asked him if his profesional charges were not usually 
very high, he responded, in an assumed solemnity of voice, which amused 
even the Court— 

“I do not propose that the inadequacy of my charges shall ever be a 
disgrace to my profession.” 

PERORATION IN A LIBEL CASE 

“This is, indeed, a serious record to make up against a man. The 
plaintiff, has made it for himself. He demands your verdict upon this 
wearisome detail of heartlessness and oppression. Grieved as we may be 
that a fellow citizen should thus stain the honor of the high office which 
he held (a Judge), or {hat in this great city, honored as it has been by 
its magnificent and far-extending charities, many a man could be found 
who would oppress the weak in their helplessness, and turn the widow 
(Mrs. McMurray) and the orphaned children of the dead soldier, beg¬ 
gared and starving, into the streets, we cannot refrain from the solemn 
duty which has been imposed upon us, of affixing the seal of condem¬ 
nation to such offenses against our consciences as have been proven 
in this case. You must say whether the unjust Judge, the avaricious man, 
shall be sustained or not. Your verdict today may be, as I trust it will 
be, so distinctly pronounced that it shall be like letters of flaming fire, 
painted against the sky, that all the world may read it; and when avarice. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


685 


witli its greedy hand, would seize upon the widow’s mite, or press the 
unfortunate debtor to the earth, or when the Judge forgets the dignity 
of his high office, they may look upon the record and take warning from 
it. * * * You are not, gentlemen of the jury, the prophets of the Lord, 
but it is an old saying that ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God.’ 
You speak for the people; you represent the people. Take this simple 
story—the most beautiful thing in literature—and apply its teachings 
here. This plaintiff, as did the Israelitish King, spared to take of lus 
own substance to supply the wants of those who made demands 
upon him, but he took tins poor woman’s home, endeared to her by a 
thousand associations, hallowed by a thousand sacred memories, and 
satisfied his creditors with that! And even as the finger of the stern 
old prophet pointed to his royal listener as guilty of the very crimes wliich 
he had but denounced, so will the verdict of this jury, reciting the story 
of the wrongs which this widowed woman has suffered, declare to this 
plaintiff, ‘Thou art the man.’ ” 

(The plaintiff’s counsel became demoralized, and did not dare to take 
the verdict of the jury after Mr. Storr’s speech. The suit was withdrawn). 
—Higgins v. Wilbur F. Storey, proprietor of the Chicago Times, 
who published the story of Mrs. McMurray’s wrongs in being 
sold out, under the mortgage, by Judge Van H. Higgins. 

—Isaac E. Adams' Life of Storrs, 125-141. 


THE PILLARS OF THE GOVERNMENT 

“Have you seen any trouble with the pillars of the government? 
The trouble was not with the pillars of the government; they did not 
rock; the trouble was with the gentlemen who were looking at the pillars 
of the government. They were like the gentleman who had been attend¬ 
ing a lecture on astronomy. Going home, loaded with a great deal of 
Democratic logic, with a step weary and uncertain, with the earth 
revolving a great many times upon its axis, he affectionately clasped a 
lamp post and said ‘Old Galileo was right about it: the world does move.’ 
And should it, the Republican party, succeed in November next and 
inaugurate the President, we will meet a subdued and conquered people, 
amid the ruins of liberty, and the scattered fragments of the Constitution. 
I have been from the tempest-tossed waters of the Atlantic to the peace¬ 
ful seas of the Pacific, over the mountains, along great rivers, across 
magnificent plains and prairies, through deserts, down into eaves, and 
I have not seen a single ruin of liberty, nor discovered a solitary fragment 
of the Constitution. We do not meet as a subdued and conquered people. 
General Grant was our nominee for President, and he was elected. He 
being the candidate, there was a strong probabihty that he would be 
inaugurated if elected. 

“Forthwith we banded this great continent with ribs of steel. Forth¬ 
with this Republican party carried the gold ore across those seas, back 
to the lands of old Egypt, and back to the shadow of the Pyramids, back 
to old Damascus, and brought all the history and tradition, spices and 
gums, incense and myrrh, and landed them in the fruitful West, where 
we received them with one hand and distributed them all over the habit¬ 
able globe with the other. This great Repubhcan party interfered with 
no pillars of the government. It found in that edifice the decaying timbers 
of human chattelhood. Bless God! it removed them, and replaced them 
with the everlasting granite of universal freedom. It broadened out that 
splendid edifice, its base covered the whole continent, each ocean washed 
its base. It reared that splendid dome, decked with stars, clean above 
the clouds, where, thank (Jod! it shines and shines today, bathed in the 
glorious sunshine of everlasting fame. It has taken out the old, foul 
records of the olden time, the old, pestilential heresies, states rights, 


686 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


secession, the thumb-screw, the faggot, the chain, the whip, all these; 
the manacled slave, the padlock for the lips, the throttled thought, all 
these; the deep, damning and almost ineffacable shame of national dis¬ 
honor, all these it has effaced from its walls, and written there, shining 
and resplendent, living forever, the grandest record of achievements 
that the history of the world has ever inscribed.” 

—Speebh in Garfield-Hancock campaign, 1880, at Cleveland, 0. 

(He had been referring to the Democratic predictions of 1868, when 
it was stated in their platfrom, “that the pillars of the government were 
rocking on their base.” 

GERMAN DEMOCRATS 

In the Douglas-Rose case, at Ann Arbor, Mich., in the midst of a 
powerful argument as to whether or not a jury should be impanelled, 
Mr. Storrs was interrupted by an opposing counsel’s remark: “How 
would it do to try it in Freedom Township—the towm of six nations 
over by Manchester, where the Germans are all Democrats?” “German 
Democrats,” said Storrs, “a jury of that description wouldn’t know 
whether the Savior was crucified on Calvary or shot at Bunker Hill!” 

THE EXCORIATION OF A WITNESS 

“Why, gentlemen of the jury,” exclaimed Storrs, “this man with a 
soul compressed to the size of an internal wart, reminds me of what a 
great Kentuckian said of a similar being, who was advised to repent 
hard for many years in order that Omnipotence might get jurisdiction 
to damn him. ’ ’ ’ 

HEAVEN AND HELL—COMPARED 

A young man once approached him with, “Mr. Storrs, pardon me, 
but you are a man who has thought much upon all topics. I wish to ask 
for your idea of heaven and hell.” Fixing his keen eyes on the inquirer, 
Mr. Storrs answered, “When I think of the beauteous descriptions of 
the abode of the saints, and when I recollect that many noble, witty, 
genial, souls have died ‘unregenerate,’ I must answer you, sir, that, 
while, doubtless, heaven has the best climate, hell has the best society.” 

(Emory A. Storrs, was born in Hinsdale, N. Y., 1833; died in Chicago, 
Ill., 1885, aged 52; was precocious, writing an essay on “Nature” at 9; 
began to read law at 13; entered State Attorney-General B. Champlin’s 
law-office, at 17—the same year, Austin and Scroggs’ office, in Buffalo; 
admitted to bar, at Batavia, N. Y., at 21; married Caroline Mead, of 
Buffalo, the same year; attained high social and legal rank in Buffalo; 
moved to N. Y. City at 38, where expenses exceeded income, and the 
same year settled in Chicago, Ill., where he soon gained a foothold. 
His weakness was an inability to save money, though paid large fees; 
hearing of N. Y. double and thribble millionaires, he rebuked his in¬ 
former with, “I am tired of hearing of mean men!” Speaking of public 
speaking, he gave this recipe:—“Fill yourself up, and then there is a 
flow; know all —both law and fact—that can possibly be advanced for 
and against”). 


JUSTICE JOSEPH STORY (1779-1845), Massachusetts 


THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS 

“I own myself to be one of those who consider the statute of limitations 
a highly beneficial statute, and entitled, as such, to receive, if not a liberal, 
at least a reasonable construction, in furtherance of its manifest object. 
It is a statute of repose; the object of which is to suppress fraudulent and 
stale claims from springing up at great distance of time, and surprising 
the parties or their representatives, when all the proper vouchers and 
evidences are lost, or the facts have become obsolete from the lapse of 
time or the defective hiemory, or death, or removal of witnesses. The 
defense, therefore, which it puts forth is an honorable defense, which 
does not seek to avoid the payment of just claims and demands, admitted 
now to be due, but which encounters, in the only practicable manner, 
such as are now beyond the power of the party to meet, with all the 
proper vouchers and evidence to repel them. The natural presumption 
certainly is that claims which have been long neglected are unfounded, 
of at least are no longer subsisting demands. And this presumption 
the statute has erected into a positive bar. There is wisdom and policy 
in it, as it quickens the dihgence of creditors, and guards innocent per¬ 
sons from being betrayed by their ignorance, or their over confidence in 
regard to transactions which have become dim by age. Yet I well re¬ 
member the time when courts of law exercised what I cannot but deem 
a most unseemly anxiety to suppress this defense; and when, to the 
reproach of the law, almost every effort of ingenuity was exhausted to 
catch up loose and inadvertent phrases from the careless lips of the 
supposed debtor, to construe them into admissions of the debt. Happily, 
that period has passed away, and judges now confine themselves to the 
more appropriate duty of construing the statute, rather than devising 
means to evade its operation. 

‘Tt appears to me, also, that it is the duty of the court to adhere to 
the very terms of the statute, and not upon imaginary equitable consider¬ 
ations, to escape from the positive declarations of the text. No exceptions 
ought to be made, unless they are found therein; and if there are any 
inconveniences or hardships growing out of such a construction, it is 
for the legislature, which is fully competent for that purpose, and not 
for the court, to apply the proper remedy.” 

— Mr. Justice Joseph Story—Spring v. Gray, 5 Mason, 523. 

Judge Story at 32 declined the Chief-Justiceship of the Supreme Court 
of Massachusetts, and at the same age, 1831, was appointed an Associate 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, of which he was judge 
34 years, until his death in 1845, at the age of 66, he having been born 
at Marblehead, Mass., in 1779. “The Walter Scott of the Common Law.” 
“His chief characteristic,” says Irving Browne, “is not strength, but 
learning, fullness and variety.” “Lacked accuracy and patient in¬ 
vestigation,” says John W. Wallace. He gave to the world some 13 
volumes of legal treatises.— The Author. 

WOMAN 

“To the honor, to the eternal honor of her sex, be it said, that in the 
path of duty no sacrifice is with them too high, or too dear. Nothing 
is with them impossible, but to shirk from what love, honor, innocence, 
religion, requires. The voice of pleasure or of power may pass by un¬ 
heeded; but the voice of affection never. The chamber of the sick, the 


688 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


pillow of the dying, the vigils of the dead, the altars of religion, never 
missed the presence of the sympathies of woman. Timid though she be, 
and so dehcate that the winds of heaven may not too roughly visit her, 
on such occasions she loses all sense of danger, and assumes a preternatural 
courage, which knows not and fears not consequences. Then she dis¬ 
plays the undaunted spirit, which neither courts diffculties nor evades 
them; that resignation, which utters neither murmur nor regret; and 
that patience in suffering, which seems victorious even over death itself.” 

—From an oration on Lady Arbella Johnson,—Life and Letters, 550. 

THE SCIENCE OF THE LAW 

“The law is a science of such vast extent and intricacy, of such severe 
logic and nice dependencies, that it has always tasked the highest minds 
to reach even its ordinary boundaries. But eminence in it can never be 
attained without the most laborious study, united with talents of a 
superior order. They are to be penetrated by skill, and mastered by a 
frequent survey of landmarks. It has almost passed into a proverb, 
that the lucubrations of twenty years wiU do little more than to conduct 
us to the vestibule of the temple; an equal period may well be devoted 
to exploring the recesses.” 

—An address on the Life and Character of Prof. Jno. H. Ashman, 

2 Story*s Life and Letters, 1^5. 

LAWYER SHOULD HAVE VARIOUS KNOWLEDGE 

“A lawyer, above all men, should seek to have various knowledge, 
for there is no department of human learning or human art which will 
not aid his professional duties. It has been the reproach of our pro¬ 
fession in former ages, and is, perhaps, true to a great extent in our own 
times, that lawyers know little or nothing but the law, and that, not in 
its philosophy, but merely and exclusively in its details. There have 
been striking exceptions, such as Lord Hardwicke, Lord Mansfield, Lord 
Stowell, Lord Brougham, and Mr. Justice Blackstone. But these are 
rare examples; and too few to do more than to establish the general 
reproach. I might, in our country, add an exception in Chancellor Kent, 
who is a scholar and general reader.” 

—In letter to his son, W. W. Story, Jan. 27, 1839. 

STORY’S LIST OF 26 GREATEST CONTEMPORARY ORATORS 

“If I were called upon to say who were the ablest orators in America, 
and were generally esteemed, within my memory (and I can confidently 
speak for the period of the last 40 years) I should say they were; 

Fisher Ames 
Samuel Dexter 
Harrison Gray Otis 
John Q. Adams 
Josiah Quincy 
Edward Everett, and 
Daniel Webster, of Mass. 

Alexander Hamilton, and 
Rufus King, of N. Y. 

John Wells, and 

Thomas A. Emmett (an Irishman by birth) also of N. Y, 

John Sergeant 
Joseph Hopkinson, and 
Horace Binney, of Penn. 

Luther Martin, and 
William Pinkney, of Md. 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


689 


Patrick Henry 

James Madison 

Jolm Marshall 

John Randolph (an eccentric genius) and 

William Wirt, of Va. 

William Gaston of N. C. 

Robert G. Harper, and 

Robt. Y. Hayne, of S. C. 

Henry Clay, of Ky. 

Jas. A. Bayard, of Del.” 

—From letter to A. Hayward, Esq., of England, who wished materials 

for an article on American Orators and Statesmen, Jan. J^, 18^0. 

GRAY AND POPE HIS FAVORITE POETS 

Virgil was his favorite of the Latin poets, and he never traveled with¬ 
out a httle pocket edition, which is marked all over by him. But his 
favorite poets were Gray and Pope. The nice wit, the terse epigram¬ 
matic point, the polished compliment of Pope, and the elaborated diction 
and classic spirit of Gray, had for him greater charms than the musical 
elegance of Spencer, or the naive and vigorous nature of Chaucer. He 
delighted in the simplicity and quiet of Goldsmith and Cowper, and 
Crabbe’s stern pictures were to his taste. Of the modern poets, Burns 
and Byron were his favorites, Wordsworth he thought too tame, Shelley 
too visionary; Coleridge and some poems of Tennyson he admired, I 
think, however, his favorite poem of all in the English language was 
Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 

— Story’s Life and Letters, vol. 2, pp. Jf21-2. 

CHARACTERIZATION OF PARSONS 

“Parsons was a man who belonged not to a generation, but to a century. 
The class of men of which he was a member is an extremely small one. 
In his wonderful wisdom and vigor of mind, he bore a strong resemblance 
to Hamilton. The fact that he had no equal deprived him of oppor¬ 
tunities for the exMbition of his prodigious abilities, and rendered un¬ 
necessary that extraordinary exertion which is usually made by am¬ 
bitious men to maintain a great reputation. His fame might and would 
have been much extended by rivalry. But there could have been no 
augmentation of his ardor and diligence in the pursuit of knowledge. 
He mastered whatever he directed his energies to with the most surprising 
ease and rapidity. He loved the old law supremely. He studied it ar¬ 
dently and continually, and made himseh thoroughly master of all its 
principles. * * * No lawyer in Westminster Hall was superior to him, 
and had he lived in England, we should have seen him not only in the 
front rank of English lawyers, but Chief Justice of the Kingdom.” 

—2 Life and Letters, pp. 974^-9. 

PLACED MADISON BEFORE JEFFERSON 


“I entirely concur with you in your estimate of Mr. Madison, — his 
private virtues, his extraordinary talents, his comprehensive and states¬ 
man-like views. To him and Hamilton I think we are mainly indebted 
for the Constitution of the United States, and m wisdom I have long 
been accustomed to place him before Jefferson.” 

— Letter to Hon. Ezekiel Bacon, Cambridge, Mass., Apr. SO, 1842. 


690 


GREAT SAYINGS BT GREAT LAWYERS 


GIBBON’S “DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE” 

“There is not, perhaps, a single library in America sufficiently copious 
to have enabled Gibbon to verify the authorities for his immortal ‘His¬ 
tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’” 

—Miscellaneous Writings, p. 37S. 

WHEN A WORK IS USEFUL 

“There are many employments whose chief object seems little con¬ 
nected with any great ultimate benefit,, which yet administer widely, 
though indirectly, to the substantial good of society. There are many 
studies which seem remote from any direct utility which yet, like the 
thousand hidden springs which form the sources of the streams of rivers, 
pour in their contributions to augment the constantly increasing current 
of public wealth and happiness. We must not, therefore, when we 
examine an art, or an invention, a book, or a building, a study, or a 
curiosity, measure its value by a narrow rule. We must not ask ourselves, 
whether we could do without it; whether it be indispensable to our 
wants; or whether though missed, it could not be spared. But the true 
question in such cases ought to be whether, in the actual structure of 
society, it gratifies a reasonable desire, imparts an innocent pleasure, 
strengthens a moral feeling, elevates a single virtue, or chastens or 
refines the varied intercourse of life. If it does, it is still useful in the 
truest sense of the term, although it may not seem directly to feed the 
hungry, cure the sick, administer consolation to the affiicted, or even 
remove the irksome doubt of a poor litigant, groping blindfold through 
the dark passage of the \sbW.”— Miscellaneous Writings, p. 4-76. 

GENIUS 

“Genius and talent are limited to no rank or condition of life. They 
have been distributed by the bounty of Providence, with an equal hand 
through every class of society. They are among those gifts which 
poverty cannot destroy, or wealth confer; which spring up in the midst of 
discouragements and difficulties, and like the power of steam, acquire 
new elasticity by pressure; which ripen in the silence of solitude, as well 
as in the crowded walks of society; which the cottage may nourish into 
a more healthy strength than even the palace or the throne The most 
formidable enemy of genius is not labor, but indolence; want of interest 
and excitement; want of motive to warm, and of object to accomplish; 
ignorance of means leading to indifference to ends. Hence it is that the 
very highest and the very lowest orders of society often represent the 
same mental phenomena—a fixed and languishing disease of the intel¬ 
lectual powers, where curiosity wastes itself in trifles, and a cold listless¬ 
ness, brooding over the thoughts, lets fall a preternatural stupor. Their 
misfortune is that so beautifully touched by the poet Gray. 

“ ‘But knowledge to their eyes the ample page, rich with the spoils of 
time, did ne’er unroll.’”— Miscellaneous Writings, p. 547. 

ARISTOTLE AND CICERO 

“The works of Aristotle and Cicero have probably furnished more 
inaterials for instruction upon all the topics, of which they treat, than 
those of any other authors who have flourished before or since their 
times.”— Miscellaneous Writings, .770. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


691 


LORD STOWELL 

“The world is more indebted to Lord Stowell for a practical exposition 
of the law of Nations upon the eternal principles of justice and reason 
than to all the jurists of all former times, and in various attainments 
he was exceeded by few, and his knowledge of general jurisprudence 
was greater than any man of his day.”— Miscellaneous Writings, 821. 

THE LAW 

“The law is a profession whose general principles enlighten and enlarge, 
but whose minutiae contract and distract the mind.” 

—Letter to S. P. P. Fay, Sep., 1798. 

THE VALUE OF AN INDEX 

“The value of an accurate index is well known to those who have fre¬ 
quent occasion to consult voluminous works in any science, and to con¬ 
struct a good one requires great patience, labor and skill.” 

— N. A. Review, vol. 23, p. 39. 

JUDGE STORY’S LABORS 

According to his biography, carefully prepared by his son, W. W. Story, 
Judge Story delivered 13 volumes of Circuit Court decisions, had a large 
share in 35 volumes of Supreme Court decisions, prepared 13 volumes 
of legal treatises, besides discourses, essays in the North American Re¬ 
view, drew up many important acts of Congress, such as the Judiciary 
and Crimes act, and discharged the duties of law professor with reg¬ 
ularity and success for 16 years in Harvard and many years president 
of a Salem bank. Wrote more works on jurisprudence than any other 
writer of his time, leading Judge William Prescott, one of the leading 
lawyers of Mass., to say: “I believe him the greatest jurist now living 
in either country,” (in a letter to Chas. Sumner, in 1840); and “made 
the dry rod of the law bud and blossom in his hands,” said his son; he 
himself thought his three greatest constitutional opinions were the Charles 
River Bridge Case, the Dartmouth College Case, and Hunter v. Martin. 

“During the period occupied in writing of his Commentaries on the 
Constitution,” says his son, three months of his time had been spent 
in attendance on the Supreme Court, at Washington, where he had borne 
his full share in preparing the judgments of the Court; he had also at¬ 
tended all the circuits in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and 
Massachusetts, and written the opinions of that year, (1831); reported 
in the 1st volume of Sumner’s Reports; he had corrected and printed his 
Commentaries on Bailments, carefully examining every proof and revise; 
he had lectured from two to three hours in the Law School every other 
day while he was at Cambridge; he had attended at the moot-courts; 
and besides all this, he had written the address at the Commemoration 
of Mount Auburn, the notice of Chief Justice Parker’s death, had con¬ 
ducted an extensive correspondence, and had been ill nearly a month.” 

— W. W. Story—2 Life and Letters, p. 106. 

STORY NOT ACCURATE 

And yet says John William Wallace, Reporter of the Supreme Court 
of the U. S., in a letter to Hampton L. Carson, of Philadelphia, Jan., 
1876; “His powers of synthesis were considerable; but when you have 
heard his opinions and text-books dissected by analytical men at the bar 
as often as I have, you will come to the conclusion that his mind was 
deficient in accuracy, that its discipline was not strict, nor its investi- 


692 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


gations patient. His reputation, which was in good degree a reflected 
one from England, where he took great pains to make himself known; 
has not, I think, stood firm in the professional mind of this day. And 
I much doubt whether he had any accurate knowledge of the civil law.” 

And John M. Shirley, in his “Dartmouth College Causes,” p. 330, 
writes; “Whole chapters of some of his law books seem to be little more 
than windrows of head-notes, raked together as the farmer rakes hay in 
the mow-field; but when we survey the ground, the wonder is that his 
work was so well performed. His opinions will probably stand higher 
in the hereafter than his text-books, except his work on “The Conflict 
of Laws,” and the commentaries on the “Constitution.” 

In this connection. Prof. William Matthews in his “Words. Their 
Uses and Abuses,” p. 252, states: “Being once employed by Congress 
to draft an important law. Judge Story spent six months in trying to 
perfect its phraseology, so that its sense would be clear beyond the 
shadow of a doubt. Yet in less than a year, having heard the arguments 
of two able attorneys in a suit which came before him as a Judge of the 
U. S. Supreme Court, he was utterly at a loss to decide the meaning 
of the statute.” 

DIFFICULTY OF COKE ON LITTLETON 

“I shall never forget the time when having read through Blackstone’s 
Commentaries, Mr, Sewell, on his departure for Washington, directed 
me to read Coke on Littleton, as the appropriate succeeding study. 
It was a very large folio, with Hargrave and Buller’s notes, which I was 
required to read also. Soon after his departure I took it up. I set myself 
down and wept bitterly. My tears dropped upon the book, and stained 
its pages. It was but a momentary irresolution. I went on and on, and 
began at last to see delight, aye, and to feel that I could comprehend 
and reason upon the text and the comments. When I had completed the 
reading of this most formidable work, I felt that I breathed a purer air, 
and that I had acquired a new power. The critical period was passed: 
I no longer hesitated.”— Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 7J. 

“While I am compelled to creep from point to headland, Marshall 
puts out to sea.”— Jos. Story. 

JOSEPH STORY ON THEORY AND PRACTICE 

“There is in the public mind a strong disposition to turn everything 
to a practical account; to deal less with learning and more with experiment; 
to seek the solid comforts of opulence rather than the indulgence of mere 
intellectual luxury. On the other hand, from the materials as well as of 
critical skill, high scholarship is a prize of no easy attainment, and when 
obtained, it slowly receives public favor and still more slowly reaches 
the certainty of wealth. Indeed, it is often combined with a contempla¬ 
tive shyness and sense of personal independence which yield little to 
policy, and with difficulty brook opposition. The honors of the world 
rarely cluster round it; and it cherishes with most enthusiasm those feel¬ 
ings which the active pursuits of life necessarily impair, if they do not 
wholly extinguish. The devotion to it, therefore, where it exists, often 
becomes an exclusive passion; and thus the gratification of it becomes the 
end instead of the means of life. Instances of extraordinary success 
by mere scholarship are more rare than in other professions. It is not 
then to be wondered at that the prudence of some minds and the ambition 
of others should shrink from labors which demand days and nights of 
study and hold out rewards which are distinct, or pleasures which are, for 
the most part, purely intellectual.”— Story’s 'Miscellaneous Writings,' 361. 


LORD STOWELL, william scott, (1745-1836) 
England 

REASON OF THE LAW, RATHER THAN PRECEDENT 

“I have rather thought, that in the jurisdiction of the admiralty, 
I am to look to the real justice of the case, and not what has been pro¬ 
nounced in a somewhat similar case by a decision of a single judge of the 
common law. I rather think we are too fond of eases; when a matter is 
to be argued, we look immediately for the cases, and by them we are 
determined more than, perhaps, by the real justice that belongs to the 
question; this may enforce the uniformity of the law, which is certainly 
a very desirable purpose that ought to be considered; for if the judgment 
be erroneous, it is but an indifferent exposition of the law.” 

—From a letter to Judge Joseph Story, May, 1828. 

PRIZE SHIPS 

“In all cases of capture, it is the first duty to bring in the prize to port 
for adjudication. If impossible to bring it in, the next duty is to destroy 
the enemy’s property. Where it is doubtful whether it is the enemy’s 
property, and impossible to bring it in, no such obligation arises, and 
the safe and proper course is to dismiss. When it is neutral, the act of 
destruction can not be justified to the neutral owner by the gravest im¬ 
portance of such an act to the public service of the captor’s own state; 
to the neutral it can only be justified under any such circumstances, 
by a full restitution in value. These are rules so clear in principles and 
estabhshed in practice that they require neither reasoning nor precedent 
to illustrate or support them.” 

— Lord Stowell—in the Felicity, 2 Dodson, 381, {1819). 

VALID MARRIAGE 

“While the English decisions have established the rule that a foreign 
marriage, valid according to the law of the place where celebrated, it 
is good everywhere else, they have no a converso established that marriage 
of British subjects, not good according to the general law of the place 
where celebrated, are universally to be regarded as invalid in England.” 

— From Reading v. Smith, 2 Haggard, 371. 

HUMANITY AND JUSTICE 

“Humanity is the second virtue of the Courts, but undoubtedly the 
first is justice.” — Evans v. Evans, 1 Haggard, 35. 

THE LAW HAS NO LOCALITY 

“The seat of judicial authority is locally here in the belligerent country, 
according to the known law and practice of nations, but the law itself 
has no locality. It is the duty of the judge sitting in an admiralty court 
not to deliver occasional and shifting opinions to serve present purposes 
and particular national interests, but to administer with indifference that 
justice which the law of nations holds out without distinction to inde¬ 
pendent States, some happening to be neutral, and some belligerent.” 

—In the Maria, 1 C. Rob., 350. 


694 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT 

“The marriage contract depraesendi does not require consummation 
in order to become very matrimony; that it does ipso facto jure GO'nsiitu.tG 
the relation of man and wife.”— Dalrymple v. Dalrymple, 2 Haggard, 5!{.. 

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY 

“All trading with the public enemy unless with the permission of the 
sovereign is interdicted. * * * A State in which contracts cannot be 
enforced cannot be a State of legal commerce.” 

— The Hoop. 1 C. Rob., 196, {1799). 

DOMICIL 

“Time is the great ingredient in constituting domicil. * * * be the occu¬ 
pation which it may, it cannot happen but with few exceptions that a 
mere length of time shall not constitute a domicil. * * * ‘The character 
that is gained by residence ceases by residence; it is an advantitious 
character which no longer adheres to him (the merchant) from the mo¬ 
ment that he put himself in motion bona fide to quit the country sine 
animo revertendif—*The Harmony', 2 C. Rob. 322. 

ELDON AND STOWELL, COMPARED 

John Scott (Lord Eldon) and William Scott (Lord Stowell), who were 
brothers, the latter six years older than the former, are here compared. 

“Could Eldon have combined with his own stores of professional learn¬ 
ing, his brother, Lord Stowell’s profound knowledge of the Civil Law 
and Cannon Law, of the Law of Nations, and of the Codes of the Con¬ 
tinental States, he would have been the most accomplished judge who 
ever sat on any British tribunal. But while he was reading Coke upon 
Littleton over and over again, and becoming thoroughly versed in all 
the doctrines laid down by Chief Justices and Chacellors in Westminster 
Hall, we are not told that he ever dipped into the Code, the Pandects, 
or the Institutes of Justinian; or that he found any pleasure in Puffendorf 
or Grotius, or that he ever formed the slightest acquaintance with D’- 
Agusseau or Pothier. Nor, in any of his arguments at the bar, or judg¬ 
ments from the bench, does he, so fan as I am aware, ever refer to the 
civil law, or any foreign writer, or authority, by way of illustration.” 

— Campbell's 7 Lord Chancellors, 619. 

A GREAT SCHOLAR AND ADMIRALTY JUDGE 

“Lord Stowell was a great scholar who had been the boast of Oxford, 
a great wit who had been the honored companion of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
a great judge, or rather legislator, the author of a code of international 
law, which defines the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, 
and which is respected over the whole civilized world. (7 Ld. Chan., 596.) 
His judgments in the Court of Admiralty have conferred a lasting obli¬ 
gation on his country, and his elegant accomplishments and delightful 
social qualities have endeared liim to a large circle of private friends.” 

—7 Campbell's Ld. Chan., 385. 

NORMAN BENTWICK ON ELDON AND STOWELL 

“In the annals of English law there is no other instance of two brothers 
attaining such a high place as did William Scott and John Scott, who 
came to be known as Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon. Their excellences were 


GREAT SAYINGS BY" GREAT LAWYERS 


695 


different; the elder was pre-eminent in counsel, the younger in advocacy; 
the one was supreme as jurist, the other as statesman. Each occupied 
a most distinguished position on the Bench^—the one as the head of the 
Civil Law and Law of Nations, was distinguished; and if Lord Eldon 
figured more prominently in the life of his own time, his brother left a 
greater name in the record of jurisprudence. Before his day England 
had not, perhaps, produced any supreme jurists, who by his writings, 
marked a new development of the Law of Nations, unless we place in 
this class Richard Zouche; and it was fitting that the great contribution 
to International Law in a country which had always excelled in practice 
rather than in theory should be made by a practical, and not by a the¬ 
oretical exponent. Lord Stowell made the law of prize in administering 
it, as Mansfield and Holt had made the law merchant on the Bench. 
He did, in fact, for the law of commerce in war what they had done for 
it in peace—established its rules in a clear and broad basis. But, 
while Holt and Mansfield’s work had validity only for the people of their 
country, much of Lord Stowell’s obtained the respect of the community 
of nations. The judgments that he gave were the ‘living voice of the 
jvs gentium.'^'—Norman Bentuick, in ^Great Jurists of the Worldf 517. 

THE TRUTH 

“The truth may not always be discernible, but when it is discovered 
it is according to the truth and not according to the fiction that we are 
to give to the transaction its character and denomination. If the voyage 
from the place of landing be not really ended, it matter not by what 
acts the party may have evinced his desire of making it appear to have 
ended.”—TAe William, No. 2, 5 C. Rob., 585. 

Lord Stowell vacated office at 83, while his vigor was still unimpaired. 
He died in 1836 in his 91st year, the same year in wliich James Madison 
died, leaving a quarter of a million in personalty, and considerable 
real estate. Though a bon vivant, he had been saving to a point of mean¬ 
ness tln-oughout his life, and he loved, as he put it—“the elegant simplicity 
of the three per cents.” “John Scott, will take any given quantity of 
wine,” was remarked of him by a clerical wit, who noted that he drank 
more when dining out than at home. Coleridge in his “Table-Talk” 
recommended to all statesmen the perusal of Puffendorf, Grotius, Dyn- 
kersock, Vattel and Wolf, the reports of Dr. Robinson (in which Stowell’s 
decisions are reported); and the verdict of later generations has con¬ 
firmed for Lord Stowell the place which the contemporary poet and 
philosopher assigned to him, as the finest exponent in practice of the 
law regulating the rights of the belligerents and neutrals in war upon 
the high seas. And all the violence and unwarrantable pretensions of 
the time, advanced by his own country as well as by Napoleon, he held 
aloft the standard of fairness towards neutrals, enforcing the established 
law with exactitude and severity, but cutting at the roots of innovation; 
never countenancing oppressive fictions. In the stress of war his judg¬ 
ments were impugned by sorne American judges, but his vindication 
came upon maturer consideration; as one of them wrote to him later: 

“On a calm review of your decisions, after a lapse of years, I am bound 
to confess my entire conviction both of their accuracy and equity.” 


SIR EDWARD SUGDEN, lord st. Leonards (1781-1875), 

England 

HOW TO READ LAW 

“I resolved, when beginning to read law, to make everything I acquired 
perfectly my own, and never to do a second thing until I had entirely 
accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a 
day as I read in a week; but at the end of twelve months my knowledge 
was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away 
from their recollection.”— Sir Edward Sag den {Lord St. Leonards). 

SUGDEN AND SCARLETT 

“Denman’s professional emoluments at the bar, though lately consider¬ 
able, had never been on the same scale as those of Scarlett and Sugden 
(who was a ^eat chancery practitioner), and several others of the leading 
contemporaries, and they were then absorbed by the expenses incident 
to a numerous family, and a style of living which without being profuse, 
was generous and liberal.”— 6 ^Lives of the Chief Justices,' 7-8. 

HIS CAREER 

After practicing for some years as a conveyancer, he was called to the 
bar at Lincoln’s Inn, in 1807, having already published his well-known 
treatise, the ‘‘Law of Vendorsand Purchasers,” (14th ed., 1862). In 1822 
he was made king’s counsel and chosen a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. He 
was returned at different times for various burroughs to the House of 
Commons, where he made himself prominent by his opposition to the 
Reform Bill of 1832; solicitor-general, 1829; Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 
1834, and again 1841-6; Lord Chancellor, 1852, and raised to the peer¬ 
age as Lord St. Leonards. He died at Boyle Farm, Thames Ditton, 
29 Jan., 1875. After his death his will was missing, but his daughter, 
Charlotte Sugden, was able to recollect the contents of a most intricate 
document, and in the action of Sugden v. St. Leonards (L. R., 1 P. D., 
154) the Court accepted her evidence and granted probate of a paper 
propounded as containing the provisions of the last will. This decision 
established the proposition that the contents of a lost Avill may be 
proved by secondary evidence, even of a single witness. 


MASON’S LONG TRAINING AS A JURY LAWYER 

“Mason’s long training as a jury lawyer made him especially particular 
about the facts or evidence of any ease, even when he was only asked 
for his opinion upon it. A distinguished member of the bar once told us 
that he had been sent back by him as many as three times to find out what 
some minute facts were in a case in which Mr. Mason’s opinion was 
sought, before he would get any opinion whatever. And it is to be regret¬ 
ted that in this respect his example is not more generally followed; for 
there can be no doubt that there is a good deal of litigation caused by 
favorable legal opinions given in cases imperfectly stated, if all the facts 
were known, no suit would be advised or begun.” 

— C. J. HilVs Art. 'Mason,' 12 American Law Review, 22^-5 
{Jan., 1878). 



CHARLES SUMNER (1811-1874), Massachusetts 

JUDICIAL TRIBUNALS 

“Let me here say that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme 
Com-t of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the 
history of judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious 
reverence. Judges are but men, and in all ages have shown a full share 
of frailty. Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated 
under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from 
the ground, summons them to judgment. 

“It was a judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the 
fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Savior barefoot over the pave¬ 
ments of Jerusalem, bending beneath the cross. It was a judicial tribunal 
which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered 
the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great 
apostle of the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; 
which, in the name of the old religion, adjudged the saints and fathers of 
the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and, which 
afterwards in the name of the new religion, enforced the tortures of the 
Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it com¬ 
pelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had 
disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun. 

“It was a judicial tribunal, which, in France, during the long reign 
of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as 
during the brief reign of terror it did not hesitate to stand forth the un- 
pitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial 
tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of the law, winch 
sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust 
divorce of his queen to the beheading of Sir. Thomas More; which lighted 
the fires of persecution, that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the 
cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which after elaborate 
argument, upheld the fatal tryanny of ship money against the patriotic 
resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, 
sent Sidney and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the 
laws of conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to 
obey; and which afterw^ards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the 
pages of English history with massacre and murder—even with the blood 
of innocent women. 

“Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surprised by 
all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem, which affirmed the 
constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished ‘jurors and the 
people’ to obey; and which now, in our day, has lent its sanction to the 
imutteraWe atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill.” 


THEOPHILUS PARSONS—THE MOST PROFOUND LAWYER IN 

MASSACHUSETTS 

“Of all the lawyers in Massachusetts, the most profound in learning 
and weighty argument, both at the bar and on the bench was Theophilus 
Parsons. * * * His early success was as a master of prize and admiralty 
law, ‘of which,’ writes his son, ‘few lawyers then knew anything.’ ‘In 
fact he had almost the monopoly of it and it was very profitable. The 
late Governor Sullivan, Judge Lowell and niy father were the only practic¬ 
ing lawvers who had much knowledge of it—my mother used to speak 
of the ‘prize times’ as the most profitable which we had ever known.’ ” 
— Warren's 'History of the American Barf 32. 



NOAH H. SWAYNE (1804-1884), Ohio 


THE INTENTION OF THE LAW 

“A thing may be within the letter of a statute, and not within its mean¬ 
ing; and within its meaning though not within its letter. The intention of 
the law-maker is the law. (As a leech was prosecuted in Bologna, under 
a law decreeing that ‘whoever drew blood in the streets should be punished 
with the utmost severity’, and Plowden cites an old statute of Edward 
II, enacting that a prisoner ‘who breaks jail shall be guilty of a felony’ 
but does not extend to a prisoner who breaks out when the prison is on 
fire, ‘for he is not to be hanged because he would not stay to be 
burned.’” — Cited by Frederic R. Coudert in ^Certainty and Justice' 161-2. 


BELVA LOCKWOOD’S PRACTICAL WORDS 

‘‘First, be thoroughly well prepared by study for your entrance into 
the profession, and do not allow unnecessary haste to begin to induce 
you to launch out into practice without the necessary qualifications; 
but after such painstaking study you will learn daily that you need to 
know more, and you will find as you proceed that each case presents a 
new aspect as to facts, and requires the bringing into use of some new 
maxims of the law not hitherto required. While you will not be expected 
to know everything, and will have always handy many books of ready 
reference with which you are familiar, you will be expected to have at your 
tongue’s end the common remedies of the law, the forum in which the suit 
is to be brought and the general drift of the law controlling it. Above all, 
you should receive a thorough literary, and if not a classical, certainly a 
scientific course of study before you begin the study of law at all. 

“Second, you should study not Only the forms of practice which are 
usually to be learned outside of court. Familiarize yourself with the 
forum in which you are to practice by observing for a portion of each 
day the manner of presenting cases by older members of the bar, con¬ 
ciliate their good graces, acquaint yourself with the personnel of the court, 
study its temper somewhat, and prepare your maiden case with great 
care. Speak distinctly, write clearly, have your papers neatly drawn 
and ready for the signature of the court without unnecessary delay. 
Do not attempt to take any unfair advantage of your adversary—treat 
him kindly, courteously—-be respectful to the court, do not browbeat 
or attempt to warp the testimony of witnesses, nor on any account lose 
your temper or uniform gentlemanly bearing. 

“Third, how are you to get practice? Begin at the lowest round of the 
ladder, and accept the first case presented that appears to need adjudica¬ 
tion by the usual process of the law. If you should take it upon you to 
redress the wrongs of some poor woman or man who has nothing to pay, 
or if the court should, as it often does, appoint you to defend in open 
court a pauper case, put forth your best efforts, for herein may lie your 
future reputation. It will certainly give you experience, which the young 
lawyer most needs. In an active practice of seventeen years, surrounded 
by the competition of distinguished lawyers in every branch of the pro¬ 
fession, and constantly doing something along all of these lines of legal 
work, my table has constantly been loaded with good paying business; 
but I never turn any man or woman away who has a good case because 
he or she has no money. All classes of business have their risk, and the 
law is no exception.”— Letter to N. Y. Herald, March 8, 1891. 



WM. H. TAFT (1857- ), Ohio 

TRIBUTE TO THE IRISH 

“There has been an easy amalgamation of the Irish with our American 
life. They have added much to the composite American made from 
various European stocks. They have softened the American wit.* They 
have added to American tenderness. They have increased the good 
fellowship, added to our social grace, increased poetical imagination, 
made us more optimistic and added to our sunny philosophy.” 

Graduate from Yale University at 21; Assistant Prosecuting Attorney 
of Hamilton Co., O., 1881 - 2 ; practiced law, 1883 - 7 ; Justice Superior Court 
of O., 1887 - 90 ; Solicitor General U. S., 1892 - 4 ; Judge 6th U. S. Circuit 
Court, 1894 - 1900 ; President of the Phillippine Archipelago, 1901 - 3 ; 
Secretary of War, under Roosevelt, 1904 - 8 ; President U. S., 1909-13 
Now Chief Justice of the U. S., upon the appointment of Pres. Harding, 
1921 .— The Author. 


JEREMIAH MASON’S “OPINION b60KS” 

There are three volumes of Mr. Mason’s- “opinions,” some eighty in 
all, given after he moved to Boston. The first was in September, 1832 
(the year he moved to Boston), the last in April, 1847 (one year before 
he died), all copied into the books in his own hand-writing. They are 
now in the Harvard Law-School Library. John Chipman Gray, of Har¬ 
vard, says: “Any idea that Mr. Mason was merely a successful jury 
advocate would be dispelled by reading in these volumes. For accurate 
statement of the facts, for careful consideration of their every aspect, 
for apt citation of authorities, and for clear declaration of the result 
reached, they are models.”— The Author. 


MOST FAMOUS FOR PUTTING IN EVIDENCE 

Mr. Mason was most famous for his sagacity in putting in evidence, 
and conducting of the cause independently of the argument, and especially 
for his skill in cross-examining witnesses. In this dangerous duty he was 
greatly assisted not only by his natural shrewdness, but by his knowledge 
of men and his wide experience of life. His detection of the truth or 
falsehood of a story related on the witness-stand is said to have been 
wonderfully accurate and often to have astounded experienced judges 
and lawyers. ‘One of the stories, current in my young days,’ says Geo. 
S. Hillard, ‘was about his unfrocking and demolishing a man who, to 
give more effect to his false testimony, had arrayed himself for the nonce 
in the garb of a Quaker. It was long remembered in the region where it 
happened as an exciting scene; amusing, at least, to every one but the 
victim.— The Author. 




SIR THOMAS N. TALFOURD (1795-1854), England 

THE EPHEMERAL CAREER OF A LAWYER 

After reviewing Wm. Follett’s professional career, Talfourd, his friend, 
in his “Vacation Rambles,” usually pronounced so brilliant, mournfully 
inquires: 

“What remains? A name dear to the affections of a few friends; a 
waning image of a modest and earnest speaker, decidedly at the head of 
the common law bar; and the splendid example of a success embodied in 
a fortune of $1,000,000, acquired in ten years, the labors of which hastened 
the extinction of his life; these are all the world possesses of Sir Wm. 
Follett. To mankind, to his country, to his profession, he left nothing; 
not a measure conceived, not a danger averted, not a principle vindicated; 
not a speech intrinsically worth preservation; not a striking image, nor 
an affecting sentiment; in his death the power of mortality is supreme. 
How strange, how sadly strange, that a course so splendid should end in 
darkness so obscure.”— English Judge and Author. 

THE BEST MEDICINE 

“Gaiety and a light heart, in all virtue and decorum, are the best 
medicine for the young, or rather for all. Solitude and melancholy are 
poison; they are deadly to all, and above all to the young.” 


AARON BURR 

“Of all the men w^ho have reached the Vice-Presidency of the United 
States, save and except Thomas Jefferson alone, Aaron Bm*r is easily 
the most fascinating and most brilliant. He discharged the onerous 
duties of that exalted station—as indeed he did those of every position 
he ever held^—with ^ace, tact and signal ability. The Vice-Presidency 
was a theatre peculiarly suited for the display of his shining talents; 
and notwithstanding the odium which clusters about his name, the 
traditions of the Senate still rank him foremost among its presiding 
officers. * * * It is generally assumed that Burr’s downfall dates 

from Weehawken, July 11, 1804, when and w^here he killed Alexander 
Hamilton, in the most celebrated duel of modern times. * * * One 
man at least, the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, of Albany, laid the foundation of 
a princely fortune and great career by shooting off a sky-rocket of pro¬ 
digious size and portentious splendor on that occasion—his funeral 
oration on Hamilton. * * * Indeed, the Reverend gentleman was 

not the only man whose fortune Burr unintentionally made as an orator. 
He was the cause of William Wirt’s delivering the Blennerhasset speech— 
who of us does not know it by heart ? Mrs. Blennerhasset, freezing tears, 
wintry winds, garden, river, ice, Shenstone shrubbery, philosophic 
apparatus, sun, moon, stars and all—the most spectacular piece of 
rhetoric in the English language, Phillip’s wonderful rhapsody on Na¬ 
poleon alone excepted.” 

— Champ Clark’s Lecture, delivered in various southern cities. 



ROGER B. TANEY (1777 1864), Maryland 


NO STATE HAS THE RIGHT TO PROHIBIT THE INTRODUC¬ 
TION OF ARDENT SPIRITS AND DISTILLED 
LIQUORS BECAUSE OF INTER-STATE 
COMMERCE 

“It has indeed been suggested that if a state deems the traffic in ardent 
spirits to be injurious to its citizens, and calculated to introduce im¬ 
morality, vice and pauperism into the state, it may constitutionally 
refuse to permit its importation, notwithstanding the laws of Congress; 
that a state may do this upon the same principles that it may resist and pre¬ 
vent the introduction of disease, pestilence and pauperism from abroad. 
But it must be remembered that disease, pestilence and pauperism are 
not the subjects of commerce, although sometimes among its attendant 
evils. They are not things to be regulated and trafficked in, but to be 
prevented as far as human foresight or human means can guard against 
them. 

“But spirits and distilled liquors are universally adapted to be subjects 
of ownership and property, and are therefore subjects of exchange, 
barter and traffic, like any other commodity in which a right of property 
exists, and inasmuch as the laws of Congress authorize their importation 
no state has a right to i^rohibit their introduction.” 

—In Thurlow V. Massachusetts, 5 Howard, 576. 

Appointed Chief-Justice of the U. S., 1836. 

Says Hampton L. Carson, in his History of the Supreme Court of the 
U. S., p. 291: “In knowledge of technical details in all departments 
of legal learning, in the mastery of principles derived from constant and 
varied occupation in the argument of causes in Courts of inferior and 
superior jurisdiction, both State and national, he excelled every one 
of his predecessors.” 

He was Chief-Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court for 27 years, being 
unable because of ill-health to sit on the bench in 1863, a year before his 
death. 

WHO WERE CITIZENS AT THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITU¬ 
TION OF THE U. S. 

“It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in 
relation to that unfortunate^ race which prevailed in the civilized and 
enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and 
adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays 
it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. 

“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings 
of inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, 
either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no 
right which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro 
might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was 
bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and 
traffic whenever a profit could be made of it. And to no nation was this 
opinion more firmly fixed or more uniformly acted upon than by the 


702 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


English Government and English people. They not only seized them 
on the coast of Africa, and sold them in slavery, but they took them as 
ordinary articles of merchandise to every country where they could make 
a profit in them and were far more extensively engaged in this commerce 
than any other nation in the world. 

“The opinion thus entertained and acted upon in England was naturally 
impressed upon the colonies they founded on this side of the Atlantic. 
And accordingly, a negro of the African race was regarded by them as an 
article of property and held, and bought and sold as such, in every 
one of the thirteen colonies which united in the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, and afterwards formed the Constitution of the U. S. * * * 

The legislation of the different colonies furnishes positive and indisputable 
proof of this fact. * * * The language of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence is equally conclusive. * * * It is too clear for dispute 

that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and 
formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration; 
for if the language (all men are created equal, that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them is 
life, liberty, etc.,) as understood in that day, would embrace them, the 
conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the 
principles they asserted.”— In Bred Scott v. Stanford, 19 Howard, kOh- 

SLAVERY DENOUNCED—SPEECH 

“There is no law which forbids us to speak of slavery as we think of 
it. Any man has the right to publish his opinion on that subject whenever 
he pleases. Mr. Gruber did quote the language of our great act of national 
independence, and insisted on the principles contained in that venerated 
instrument. He did rebuke masters, who, in the exercise of power, are 
deaf to the calls of humanity, and he warned them of the evils they might 
bring upon themselves. He did speak with abhorrence of those reptiles 
who live by trading in human flesh, and enrich themselves by tearing 
the husband from the wife, the infant from the bosom of the mother, 
and this, I am instructed, was the head and front of his offending. Shall 
I content myself with saying he had a right to say this ? That there is no 
law to punish him? So far is he from being the object of punishment 
in any form of proceeding that we are prepared to maintain the same 
principles, and to use if necessary the same language here, in the temple 
of justice and in the presence of those who are the ministers of the law. 
A hard necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the evils of slavery for 
a time. It was imposed upon us by another nation, while we were yet 
in a state of colonial vassalage. It cannot be easily or suddenly removed. 
Yet, while it continues, it is a blot on our national character, and every 
real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will effectually, though it 
must be gradually, wiped away, and earnestly looks for the news by which 
this necessary object may be best attained.” 

—From speech in defense of Mr. Gruber, a Methodist minister from 
Pa., indicted for inciting slaves to insurrection, ^Gt. Am. Lawyers,^ 
vol. 4 ., 92-3. 

SCOTT V. SANDFORD 

Taney held in this noted case: 

1. That Scott, being a negro whose ancestors were brought to this 
country and sold as slaves, even though he were free, was not a “citizen” 
within the meaning of the Constitution, hence the Circuit Court of the 
U. S., in Missouri, had no jurisdiction. 

2. That Scott’s removal to Ft. Snelling (now Minnesota), then part 
of Louisiana Territory, free territory, did not set him free because 
the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and void. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


703 


3. That under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution ‘‘no person 
shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law;" 
and, therefore, Sandford could not be deprived of his property (the negro). 

JUDGE CURTIS’S DISSENTING OPINION 

"The dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Curtis has been thought to 
furnish a complete answer to the argument of Chief Justice Taney on 
the ‘citizen’ point of the case. The writer believes that Mr. Jhstice 
Curtis utterly failed to capture the citadel of Taney’s position, and barely 
succeeded by brilliant diversions in demolishing a few unimportant out¬ 
works. The rnain positions he not only leaves untouched but only makes a 
skillful and misleading feint of attacking.’’ 

— Wm. E. Mickell, Professor of Law, University of Pa., under 
'Roger B. Taney,' Great American Lawyers, vol. J, 157-8. {Judge 
Curtis said of Judge Taney: "His power of subtle analysis exceeded 
that of any man I ever knew.”) 

OPINION OF GEROGE TICKNOR CURTIS 

“Chief Justice Taney was, indeed, a gread magistrate, and a man of 
singular purity of life and character. * * * If he had never done 

anything else that was high and heroic, and important, his noble vin^ca- 
tion of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the dignity and authority of his 
office, against a rash minister of State, who, in the pride of a fancied 
executive power came near to the commission of a great crime, will commend 
the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty, 
so long as our institutions shall endure.’’ Reference is here made to the 
case of John Merriam, a citizen, who in 1861, was. imprisoned in Ft. 
McHenry, near Baltimore, by a military order; and in whose case the 
writ of the Chief Justice of the U. S. was refused entrance into the fort, 
upon the excuse that the President had suspended the writ of habeas 
corpus.—1 Memoirs of Benj. R. Curtis, 2Jf.O. 


CURTIS’S TRIBUTE TO JUDGE TANEY 

"I have been long enough at the bar to remember Mr. Taney’s appoint¬ 
ment; and I believe it was then a general impression in this part of the 
country that he was neither a learned, nor a profound lawyer. This was 
certainly a mistake. His mind was thoroughly imbued with the rules of 
the common law and of equity law; and when I first knew him he was 
master of all that peculiar jurisprudence which is the special providence 
of the courts of the United States to administer and apply. His skill 
in applying it was of the highest order. His power of subtle analysis 
exceeded that of any man I ever knew. * * * In his case, balanced 

and checked by excellent common sense and by great experience in 
practical business, both public and private. It is certainly true, and 
I am happy to be able to bear direct testimony to it, that the surpassing 
ability of the Chief Justice, and all the great qualities of character and 
mind, were more fully and constantly exhibited in the consultation 
room, while presiding over and assisting the deliberations of his brethren 
than the public knew or can ever justly estimate. * * There, his 

dignity, his love of order, his gentleness, his discrimination, were of 
incalculable importance. The real intrinsic character of the tribunal 
was greatly influenced by them, and always for the better.’’ 

—Before the Bar of the 1st. U. S. Circuit Court, Boston, Oct. 17, 1864, 
upon the death of Chief Justice Taney: Warren's 'Hist. Am. Bar,' 
421-2. 


LORD EDWARD THURLOW (1732-1806), England 

FOR THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH 


“Gentlemen, I’m against you by G-. I am for the Established 

Church, d-me! Not that I have any more regard for the Established 

Chur'ch than for any other church, but because it is established. And if 

you can get your d-d religion established, I’ll be for that too.” 

— To a deputation of distinguished men who waited on Lord Chancellor 
Thurlow to secure his support in their attempt to obtain the repeal of 
the Corporation and Test Act, 1788. 

HOW TO SUCCEED AT THE BAR 

“Let your son spend his own fortune, marry and spend his wife’s, 
and then go to the bar; there will be little fear of his failure.” 

— Thurlow's advice to the father who wished his son to study law. 

PITT’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“Thurlow, while in the Privy Council, proposed nothing, opposed 
nothing and acquiesced in anything.” 

THURLOW’S COMMENT ON PITT, AT HIS DEATH 

“A d-d good hand at turning a period.” 

THE BARMAID’S BABY 

Lord Thurlow, while at the bar, met a barrister one morning who 
accosted him with, 

“Oh! I am told that the barmaid at Nando’s has a little baby?” 

“What the d-1 is that to me?" 

“But,” pursued the barrister, “I hear the child is yours.” 

“Then, what the d-1 is that to you?" 

AT SEVENTY-FOUR 

“Standing here we can see his prodigious bushy eyebrows, that are 
as white as driven snow, and under them we can see that large black 
eyes, beneath the angry fierceness of which hundreds of proud British 
peers, assembled in their council-chamber, have trembled like so many 
whipped school-boys. There is no luster in them now, and their habitual 
expression is one of weariness and profound indifference to the world, 
a look that is deeply pathetic and depressing, until some transcient 
cause of irritation of the words of a sprightly talker rouse him into 
animation. But the most notable quality of his face is its look of extreme 
age. Though only seventy-four, he looks a hundred.” 

—^Stories About Lawyers,' 220. 

GEORGE BANCROFT ON THURLOW 

“Thurlow had a coarse nature and bad heart; was strangely profane 
in^language, and reckless of morals and of decorum in domestic life. 
He enjoyed the credit of being fearless of the aristocracy, because his 






GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


705 


manners were rough; but no man was more subservient to their interests. 
Lord North governed himself on questions of law by his advice; and 
Thurlow proved the evil genius of that minister and of England. Toward 
America no man was more unrelenting.”— 3 Bancroft’s U. S. Hist, 38J^. 

HOW HE DISPATCHED BUSINESS 

Lord Thurlow was asked how he got through all his business as Chancel¬ 
lor; his answer was: “Just as a pickpocket gets through a horse-pond: 
he must get through.”— 1 Twiss’s * Eldon,’ 280. 

SURGEON AND BUTCHER IN SAME CLASS 

At Buxton, Thurlow lodged with a surgeon and apothecary, opposite 
to whose house there was a butcher’s shop. He asked his landlord 
“whether he or his neighbor Idlled the most.” 

EVIDENCE OF DEATH 

‘‘Upon the death of a tenant for life, who had been entitled to the 
interest of a sum of money in court, the attorney apphed to have the 
fund taken out of court, on behalf of an individual who had become 
entitled to the principal. Thurlow interposed, ‘How, sir, do I know that 
the tenant for life is dead? I shall not take your assurance as worth 
anything. Make an affidavit.’ The attorney made an affidavit, swearing 
that the person named in it was dead. ‘Well,’ said Thurlow, ‘and what do 
jmu expect from such an affidavit? How do I know that the man named 
in the affidavit and the man who received the interest was the same 
person?’ The attorney said, ‘Then I suppose that I must make an affi¬ 
davit of that, also; but surely I am treated with a degree of suspicion 
and harshness that I do not deserve. I’ll make the affidavit; but your 
lordship will allow me to say that any other judge would not have re¬ 
quired it. I know, I must know, the man is dead: I was at his funeral.’ 
‘So, you might be, but how does that prove that the man who received 
the interest, and the man whose funeral you attended, was the same 
person?’ ‘My Lord, hear me, the man who received the interest, and whose 
funeral I attended was my client.’ ‘Why, sir, did you not mention that 
at first? A great deal of time and trouble might have been saved. That 
he was your client is some evidence that he may be dead; nothing was so 
likely to kill him.”— 1 Twiss’s Eldon, 280. 

A WOODEN MACHINE COULD DRAW PLEADINGS 

“Lord Thurlow, when Chancellor, called Eldon into his room, at Lincolns’ 
Hall, and, among other things, asked him if he did not think that a wooden- 
machine might be invented to draw bills and answers in chancery. Eldon 
told him that he would be glad, if such a machine could be invented, as 
his stationer’s copy of his pleadings generally cost him more than the fees 
paid him by the solicitors. Many years after this, and when he had ceased 
to be Chancellor, and Eldon was attorney-general, a bill was filed against 
his friend, Mr. Macnamara, the conveyancer, and Lord Thurlow advised 
him to have the answer sent to Eldon to be perused and settled. The 
solicitor took the answer to Eldon and he read it. It was so wretchedly 
ill composed and drawn that Eldon told him that not a word of it would 
do; that he had not time to draw the answer from beginning to end; 
that he must set some gentleman to draw the answer who understood 
pleading and then bring it to him. Eldon then went down to the House 
of Lords, the same day, to plead a cause at the bar there. Thurlow 
was in the House of Lords and came to the bar, and said to Eldon, ‘So 


706 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


I understand you think my friend Mac’s answer won’t do.’ ‘Do!’ said 
Eldon; ‘my lord, it won’t do at all: it must have been drawn by that 
wooden-machine which you formerly told me might be invented to draw 
bills and answers.’ ‘That’s very unlucky,’ said Thurlow, ‘and impudent, 
too, if you had known the fact, that 1 drew the answer myself.’ ” 

—1 Twiss^s Life, 167. 

JUDGE SHOULD DECIDE LAW IN LIBEL CASES 

“The construction of libels belongs by law and precedent to the judge, 
not to the jury; because it is a point of law of which they are not qualified 
to judge. If any other rule prevailed, if the matter was left to the jury, 
there would be nothing fixed and permanent in the law. It would not only 
vary in different counties and cities, according to their different interests 
and passions, but also in the minds of the same individuals, as they should 
happen at different times to be agitated by different humors and caprices. 
God forbid that the laws of England should ever be reduced to this un¬ 
certainty! All our dictionaries of decisions, all our reports, and Coke 
upon Littleton itself, would then be useless. Our young students, instead 
of coming to learn the law in the Temple and in Westminster Hall, would 
be obliged to seek it in the wisdom of petty juries, country assizes, and 
untutored mechanics. Adieu to precision, adieu to consistency, adieu 
to decorum! All would be confusion, contradiction and absurdity: 
the law would, like Joseph’s garment, become nothing but a ridiculous 
patchwork of many shreds and many colors, a mere sick man’s dream, 
without coherence, without order, a wild chaos of jarring and heterogen¬ 
eous principles, which would deviate farther and farther from harmony. 
Yet the prevention of this state is the crime with which our judges are 
charged. 0 tempora, 0 mores I To what are we come at last!” 

Thurlow was Lord Chancellor from 1778 to 1792, and held the great 
seal during the ministries of North, Rockingham and Pitt. He was a 
bitter opponent of the interests of the colonies during the American 
Revolutionary War. — The Author. 


CHOATE’S PROVING A NEGATIVE 

“A vessel insured was prohibited from going north of the Okhotsh 
Sea. Within a year, the duration of the policy, she was burned north of 
the sea proper, but south of some of the sea’s gulfs. Defendant set up 
no loss within the policy. On the way to the court house Choate said to 
his associates, as they were for plaintiff: ‘Why should we prove we were 
not north of that sea; why not let them prove we were?’ The mate was 
put on to prove the burning within the year and state the loss. No 
cross-examination followed and the plaintiff rested. The defendant 
was dumfounded; had no witnesses ready; expected plaintiff would 
consume two days in proving he was within the terms of the policy. 
The ease lasted an hour and Choate won.” 

— Reed’s Condiict of Litigation, 150. 



CHARLES 0. TICHENOR (1842-1915), Missouri 


A LAWYER’S RETROSPECT 

“Today I am seventy, three score and ten. Today I retire from the 
practice of the law, having practiced forty-six years. And I do so with 
pleasure, for it seems to me that a lawyer should do so while in full vigor 
of mind and body. A lawyer should be remembered by those with whom 
he has mingled professionally as he was in his prime, at his best. There 
is no more melancholy sight to me than to see an old lawyer practicing 
after he has ceased to be fit for the task in a profession which has no place 
for those enfeebled by age. One can live too long for his fame, small 
though it may be. At the end of life I have no cause to be vain, for the 
result of my hard work for a lifetime seems very small. It is difficult 
for one to realize that a lawyer could work so long and so faithfully as 
I have done and yet accomplish so little. I can say but little in my 
behalf, only this, that I have devoted my life to my profession and to my 
clients. If I have ever done an unprofessional act I do not know it, and 
think that I can safely say that I have at all times tried to hold high the 
standard of my profession, not by talk, but by my conduct as a lawyer. 
I have never tried to get a client, never have tried to get a case. I have 
never sought the so-called honors of this world, have never cared for them. 
I have always hated notoriety. I have never been money-mad. I do not 
wish to be remembered after I am dead. I never thought myself a great 
man, never had a suspicion that I could be one, and thus have saved 
myself much trouble, and my friends, it may be, some annoyance. I 
confess, however, that I have at all times desired the respect and friend¬ 
ship of those of my profession who have known me well. 

“Although there are so many lawyers not fitted for their profession; 
although there is occasionally a black sheep among them; although there 
is so much drudgery in the general practice of the law, yet it is my judg¬ 
ment, formed from long experience and observation, that it is the noblest 
of all professions, more in it to develop a man who loves it and lives for 
it alone. And while it demands greater sacrifices in order to succeed than 
any other, yet if I was to live my life over again I would choose as I 
have chosen. 

“I am glad that I have lived in the times during which I have lived. 
I have been blessed with health and strength during a long life and have 
had many opportunities, my share of them. I have had as much success 
as I have expected and fully as much as I have deserved. My life has 
been a pleasant one. I hope and believe that I have grown old gracefully 
and good naturedly. My day is spent, my tale is nearly told.” 

— Charles 0. Tichenor, Kansas City, Mo., Jan. 6, 1912. 

This letter was left by Mr. Tichenor, when he closed his practice in 
Kansas City, and moved to California, to spend his closing days in study 
and repose. H e was one of the best and most eminent lawyers in Missouri 
and died in 1915 in Kansas City, to which he was brought after being 
stricken with paralysis. The compiler of this work wished him to become 
one of his group of 144 Eminent American, English and Canadian 
Lawyers, in which he would have been a worthy representative, but he 
replied to the request: “Much obliged for the compliment, but I would 
not go in the group of engravings for a thousand dollars. 1 would suffer by 
the comparison. What! with such judges and lawyers as Hale, Eldon, 
Mansfield, Hardwicke, Marshall, Choate, Pinkney and O’Conor? Why, 
1 would suffer, in the comparison!” 


SAMUEL J. TILDEN (1814-1886), New York 


AN HONEST BAR 

“If the bar is to become merely a method of making money, making 
it in the most convenient way possible, but making it at all hazards, 
then the bar is degraded. If the bar is to be merely an institution that 
seeks to win causes, and to win them by backdoor access to the judiciary, 
then it is not only degraded, but it is corrupt. * * * Sir, I believe 

that this country is tonight at about the lowest point in the great cycle 
which we have occasionally to traverse. I believe that there will come a 
sounder and a better public sentiment in which speculation and gambling 
and jobbing and corruption will lose their power, and in which free govern¬ 
ment will vindicate its right to the confidence of mankind. If I did not 
believe this, I should think that a very great part of my own life was 
lost, and all the traditions I have derived from my ancestors.” 

— To the New York Bar Ass’n, Feb. 1, ’70, Samuel J. Tilden. 
NULLIFICATION AND SECESSION 

“I studied this whole question in 1830, during the controversy between 
the federal government and the State of South Carolina. If I ever studied 
any subject thoroughly and exhaustively, it was this question. I arrived 
at conclusions so clear and so completely thought out that I have never 
since felt a shadow of doubt rest upon them. Mr. Madison, the Father 
of the Constitution of the United States, was then living. He participated 
largely in the discussions of that period. He brought to the subject full 
knowledge of the views of the framers, and of the contemporaneous 
history of the Constitution, a large political philosophy, and half a century 
of thought, by the one great intellect. In my judgment no man can claim 
to understand the Constitution or government of the United States who 
is not familiar with the writings of James Madison. In the discussions 
of that period it was established that Thomas Jefferson, the founder of 
the Democratic party, entirely concurred with Mr. Madison in denying 
the rights of any State to nullify the laws or to secede from the Union. 
Andrew Jackson was President, Martin Van Buren was Vice-President, 
Edward Livingston was Secretary of State, Silas Wright was a Senator 
in Congress, William L. Marcy was Governor of this State. All of these 
great statesmen of New York shared in the discussions. They all repudi¬ 
ated nullification and secession, as did Jackson, Madison and Jefferson.” 

—Speech at Union Square, N. Y., Sept. 17, ’61. 

Chas. O’Connor; “Possessed a more perfect knowledge of law than 
any lawyer in this country or abroad.”— Sam’l J. Tilden. 

PRINCIPLES 

“Principles are the test of political character. The Democracy always 
made fidelity to official trust and justice to the toiling masses who earn 
their bread by the sweat of their brow a fundamental article in the party 
creed. It is time now to proclaim and to enforce the decree that whoever 
plunders the people, though he steal the livery of Heaven to serve the 
devil in, is no Democrat.” 

—'The Evil of Federal Centralism,’ at Rochester, N. Y., Oct. J, 1871. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


709 


GOVERNMENTAL MACHINERY 

“In my opinion, no instrumentality in human society is so potential 
in its influence on the well-being of man kind as the governmental 
machinery which administers justice and makes and executes laws. 
No benefaction of private benevolence could be so fruitful in benefits 
as the rescue of this machinery from the per^^ersion which made it a 
means of conspiracy, fraud and crime against the rights and the most 
sacred interests of a great community.” 

—^The N. Y. City Ring: Its Origin, Maturity and Fall,' N. Y. City, 
Jan., 1873. 

PEACE GREATER THAN WAR 

“While it is a great thing to lead armies, it is a greater thing to lead 
the minds of men.” 

—Said hy Tilden to Wm. R. Nelson, of the Kansas City Star, 

SALE OF THE PRESIDENCY 

Tilden told Bigelow, his biographer, that a Justice of the United States 
Supreme Court, who was a member of the Electoral Commission, offered 
to sell the presidency for $200,000, in the memorable campaign of 1876. 
—John Rigelow's ^Retrospection of An Active Life.' 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

“Thomas Jefferson has a title to the esteem and gratitude of the Ameri¬ 
can people even greater than that which he derived from being the author 
of the Declaration of Independence, and from being the author of the 
Statute of Religious Freedom by the State of Virginia. During all the 
bloody conflicts of the American Revolution, and the civil struggles out 
of which our system of government emerged, and the controversies 
through which was impressed upon it the character of a government 
‘by the people, for the people,’ he was the apostle of human freedom, 
and the greatest leader of that beneficent philosophy which was embodied 
in our institutions. At a time when powerful tendencies are at work 
to subvert the original character of our government, to break down the 
limitations of power established by the Constitution, to centralize the 
action and influence of official authorities, to create a governing class, 
using the machinery of government as a corrupt balance of power in the 
elections, and then shaping legislation and administration in the interests 
of a few against the many, the precepts and example of such a man as 
Mr. Jefferson cannot be too often invoked.” 

—From letter to Chauncey F. Black, upon being elected honorary 
member of the Jeffersonian Ass'n, of N. Y., N. Y., Jan. 27, 1881. 
2 Bigelow's ' Tilden s Letters and Literary Memorials,' 611. 

CHARLES O’CONOR 

“In my judgment, Mr. O’Conor was the greatest jurist among all 
the English-speaking people. He carried the best spirit of philosophical 
inquiry into every professional investigation. In variety of resources, 
in every form of experience, participating in every important legal 
controversy during fifty years, with unexampled power of discrimination 
and memory, he had a vast mass of information on every professional 
subject. He was a man of lofty integrity and honor, and scorned all 
idea of making his professional abilities the means of acquiring money. 
His character is worthy of a more elaborate tribute than I have the 
opportunity to pay to him in the brief time of your call.” 

— To a caller upon O'Conor's death: ' Tilden's Letters and Literary 
Memorials.' 2 voL, 64^3-4. 


710 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES 

“The Democratic party had its oragin in the effort of the more advanced 
patriots of the Revolution to resist the perversion of our government 
from the ideal contemplated by the people. Among its conspicuous 
founders are Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; Samuel Adams 
and John Hancock, of Massachusetts; George Clinton and Robert R. 
Livingston, of New York; and George Wythe and James Madison, of 
Virginia. Prom the election of Mr. .Jefferson as president, in 1800, for 
sixty years the Democratic party mainly directed our national policy. 
It extended the boundaries of the Republic, and laid the foundations of 
all our national greatness, while it preserved the limitations imposed 
by the Constitution and maintained a simple and pime system of domestic 
administration. On the other hand, the Republican party has always 
been dominated by principles which favor legislation for the benefit of 
particular classes, at the expense of the body of the people. It has become 
deeply tainted with the abuses which naturally grow up during a long 
possession of unchecked power, especially in a period of civil war and 
false finance. The patriotic and virtuous elements in it are now unable 
to emancipate it from the sway of selfish interests which subordinate 
public duty to personal greed. The most hopeful of the best citizens it 
contains despair of its amendment except through its temporary expulsion 
from power. It has been boastingly asserted that the Republican party 
contains a disproportionate share of the wealth, the culture and the 
intelligence of the country. The unprincipled Grafton, when taunted 
by James the Second with his personal want of conscience, answered: 
*That is true, but I belong to a party that has a great deal of consciencef 
Such reasoners forget that the same claim has been made in all ages and 
countries by the defenders of wrongs against new reforms. It was alleged 
by the Tories of the American Revolution against the patriots of that day. 
It was repeated against Jefferson, and afterwards against Jackson. 
It is alleged by the conservatives against those who, in England, are now 
endeavoring to enlarge the popular suffrage. 

“All history shows that reforms in government must not be expected 
from those who sit serenely on the social mountain-tops enjoying the 
benefits of the existing order of things. Even the divine Author of our 
religion found His followers not among the self-complacent Pharisees, 
but among lowly-minded fishermen. The Republican party is largely 
made up of those who live by their wits, and who aspire in politics to 
advantages over the rest of mankind, similar to those which their daily 
lives are devoted to securing in private business. The Democratic 
party consists largely of those who live by the work of their hands, 
and whose political action is governed by their sentiments or imagination. 
It results that the Democratic party can be molded to the support of 
reform measures which involve a sacrifice of selfish interests.’’ 

— Tilden’s letter to the Committee Offering him the Presidential Nom¬ 
ination, in 188f: ^Letters and Literary Memorials,' 2 voL, 653- 

JAS. SCHOULER’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“Tilden, now 62 years of age (1876), when nominated for the presidency 
and far surpassing Hays in worldly wisdom and a varied experience, 
as he did in years, may be said to have reached, this year, the fullest 
maturity of his powers. It is quite doubtful, whether among the per¬ 
plexities of a new Democratic Presidency, had he attained it, he would 
have sustained himself in supreme national office with the same vigorous 
grasp of affairs, selection of subordinates and attack upon existing 
abuses, that set him forth now with such prominence as one of the very 
greatest governors New York had ever chosen. At all events, this policy 
towards securing the new and highest prize of his calling was not to make 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


711 


a zealous canvass as a public speaker but rather to conduct a still hunt 
for votes and avoid controversy. As an able corporation lawyer he had 
amassed a fortune, and, being unmarried, he had pursued politics from 
his youth, as a pleasurable diversion to a life of business, not always 
choice in his methods or associates. Many who had known him well 
thought him crafty and cunning, in spite of the splendid record for reform 
he had lately made. In finance, he was a master; his perfect ability to 
bear official responsibilities, so long as mental and physical health con¬ 
tinued unimpaired, were beyond question, and he possessed skill undeni¬ 
able in the arts of political management. All knowing well that immense 
pressure of a dangerous sort would be brought to bear upon him, were he 
and the Democratic party brought into immediate power, many who now 
concluded to give Tilden their independent support felt him to be a doubt¬ 
ful deliverer from misrule, if a deliverer at all. For the revival of a 
Democratic South gave cause of an anxiety and hesitation to Northern 
citizens who had always been loyal to the Union.” 

—7 Schouler's U. S. Hist., 303-4. 

OUR DESIRES 

“I have always believed that talent, ability, honor would achieve 
anything that the human heart ought to desire, if only it were interested 
that it should be achieved without any concession of one’s conviction of 
right of one’s sense of duty.” 

HENRY WATTERSON ON TILDEN 

“The nearest approach to the ideal statesman I have ever known 
was the most grossly stigmatized while he lived. I have Mr. Tilden in 
mind. If ever a man pursued an ideal life he did. Prom youth to age he 
dwelt amid his fancies. He was truly a man of the world among men 
of letters, and a man of letters among men of the world. A philosopher, 
pure and simple, a lover of books, of pictures, of all things beautiful 
and elevating, he yet attained great riches, and being a doctrinaire 
and having a passion for affairs, he was able to gratify the aspirations 
to eminence and the yearning to be of service to the State which had 
filled his heart. Tilden seemed a medley of contradictions. Without the 
artifices usual to the practical politician, he gradually rose to the power 
of his party; thence to become the leader of a vast following, his name a 
shibboleth to millions of his countrymen, who enthusiastically supported 
him, and who believed that he was the Chief Magistrate of the United 
States. He was an idealist; he lost the White House because he was so, 
though represented while he lived by his enemies as a scheming spider, 
weaving his web amid the coil of mystification in which he hid himself. 
For he was personally known to few, in the city where he made his abode; 
a great lawyer and jurist, who rarely appeared in court; a great political 
leader to whom the hustings were mainly a stranger; a thinker, and least 
of all were his political companions moved by the loss of the Presidency, 
which had seemed in his grasp, to have his last will and testament success¬ 
fully assailed.”— 1 Henry Watterson s 'Autobiography,' 273-5. 


ROBERT TOOMBS (1810-1885), Georgia 

REBUKED THE IRISH JUDGE 

Robert Toombs never took the “Iron Clad” oath after the war, and 

at one time arose to address Judge E—-, an Irish Federal Judge, 

and was told by the judge to sit down, that he had no right to participate 
in his Court as he had never'taken the oath of allegiance. Toombs 
indignantly replied: “I was in full practice, sir, in ^he United States 
Supreme Court, when you were drinking slops in the bogs of Ireland.” 

“I have heard John Randolph of Roanoke, and met Burges of Rhode 
Island, but this wild Georgian is a Mirabeau.” 

— Geo. McDuffie of S. C., who met Toombs in debate at Augusta, Ga. 

Of this debate, Stovall in his Life of Toombs, pp. 45-6, says; “Genius 
sat upon his (Toombs) brow, and his eyes were as black as death and bigger 
than ox’s. His argument and invective, his overpowering eloquence, 
linger in the memory of old men now.” 

“Toombs is one of the most extraordinary men I have ever known. 
As a talker I have never known liis equal. As a lawyer, I have never seen 
his superior before judge or jury. As a legislator in debate, few in the 
House or Senate ever wishes to encounter him; none ever did to win 
any laurels by it. His mind is very quick and active. Contrary to general 
opinion, he has always been a close and hard student; but his powers 
of analysis and generalization are so great that he can acquire more in 
less time than any one I ever saw. In reading the report of a case,^ of 
an author on any subject, he at once seizes upon the real ideas, gleaning 
the vital part from the general verbiage by a process rapid as intuition. 
As a pubhc speaker or ‘stump orator’, no one in any age or country 
ever had more power than he in the days of his prime. He was thorough¬ 
ly read in local law, in United States history, and in national law. His 
true greatness did not consist in statesmanship; he was governed too 
much by passion and impulse. As a lawyer, debater, popular orator, 
planter, political economist, it would be difficult to find his equal, his 
superior could not be found in his day.” 

— A. H. Stephens, ^Prison Journal,' Aug., '65. 


BARRINGTON’S PEN-PICTURE OF CURRAN 

“Curran’s person was mean and decrepit, very slight, very shapeless, 
with nothing of the gentleman about it; on the contrary, displaying 
spindle limbs, a shambling gait, one hand imperfect and a face yellow, 
furrowed, rather flat and thoroughly ordinary. Yet his features were 
the very reverse of disagreeable. There was something so indescribably 
dramatic in his eye and the play of his eyebrow that his visage seemed 
the index of his mind, and his humor the slave of his will. His very 
foibles were amusing. He had no vein for poetry, yet, fancying himself 
a bard, he contrived to throw off pretty verses. He certainly was no 
musician, but conceiving himself to be one, played very pleasingly. 
Nature had denied him a voice, but he could sing; and in the rich mould 
of his capabilities the desire had bred in some degree the capacity.” 



BENJ. F. TRACY (1830-1915), New York 

THE PERSECUTION OF BEECHER 


“1 ask of you for this defendant nothing but that justice which you 
would mete out to the humblest citizen; yet you cannot but feel, as I 
do, an overwhelimng sense of the solemn importance of this trial. It 
will loom larger in history than any which has taken place for eighteen 
centuries. No man of this defendant’s fame has ever been called upon to 
answer such a charge in a court of justice. What a spectacle has been 
presented in this city of churches! Every day for eight weeks this aged 
man, who has been a large and various contributor to the literature of 
the English tongue, and who never wrote a word that was not inspired 
by the love of God, of nature and of his fellow-men; who has swayed 
with sublimest eloquence greater multitudes than any living orator, and 
who never spoke save for justice, truth and virtue; who has convinced, 
rescued, instructed and comforted unnumbered thousands of erring, 
struggling, suffering souls, counting his own life, fortune and reputation 
as nothing, if by their risk or sacrifice he could serve the humble and the 
weak; this man whose fame encircles the earth, and whose name is honored 
and beloved wherever Christianity bears sway, has been dragged by 
malignant conspirators into this court to answer the vile and odious 
charge, which all the evidence of a lifetime outside of these walls, no less 
than the evidence produced within them, brands indelibly as a lie. 
Day by day he has passed along our streets with his brave and true wife, 
to meet the unmerited indignity of this arraignment. Strong men have 
been touched with mingled pity and wrath at the sight, and women have 
turned aside to weep. It is an outrage which posterity will avenge. 
This fair city will yet boast among her proudest monuments the statue of 
him who conferred upon her such glory, and received within her gates 
such torture. All who had part in this crowning drama of his life will be 
remembered with execration or with praise, those who falsely accused, 
who weakly doubted, those cowards who forsook him, those who were 
swift to believe evil, on the one side; and, on the other, those who stead¬ 
fastly trusted, and those, gentlemen of the jury, who justly judged. 
Yes, gentlemen, by the judgment which you here pronounce, you will 
yourselves be judged at the tribunal of after ages. What you do here 
will never die. When these scenes shall have passed away; when he who 
presides over this trial shall rest in the silent chamber of the dead; when 
the seats you occupy shall be filled by your children, or your children’s 
children, strangers from distant climes will come to view the place from 
which was given back to the world, freed from cloud or passing shadow, 
the name of Henry Ward Beecher. Even when centuries shall have rolled 
away, when these marble walls shall have crumbled and decayed, this 
trial will be remembered with undiminished interest. More eloquent 
than the words of this defendant, more inspiring than his deeds of mag¬ 
nanimity, more powerful among men than the story of all his life of 
usefulness and virtue, will the the recital of his serene faith and patience 
under dire affliction and deadly assault. Heroes are admired; it is the 
martyrs who are beloved. But the triumphal procession and the loud 
hosanna, the cup, the thorn crown, the cross, the sepulcher, conquered 
the world; and since the hour of the Divine Sufferer no follower of Christ 
has borne the cross in vain. Gentlemen, do you believe in God? Then 
you will recognize today what the generations to come will so clearly 
see; what the Day of Revelation will blaze forth in letters of immortal 
light, the mark of God’s approval upon this. His faithful, upright, suffer¬ 
ing servant, whom He hath hitherto guided, sustained, illumined, blessed; 


714 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


whom, ill the hour of tribulation, He hath not forsaken; and whorn, by 
all the truth of His eternal promise and all the resources of High mighty 
power. He will surely rescue and reward; for ‘though hand join in hand, 
the wicked shall not be unpunished, but the'seed of the righteous shall 
be delivered.’ ” 

— Benj. F. Tracy for Defendant Beecher, in 1874- The Jury dis¬ 
agreed, standing nine for acquittal and three for a verdict against Mr. 
Beecher. 


CURRAN’S TILT WITH JUDGE ROBINSON 

“When a young man and struggling with poverty, Curran had a case 
to argue in Judge Robinson’s court, who owed his elevation to his syco¬ 
phancy to power and certain miserably written political pamphlets. In 
controverting a postion of an opposing counsel, Curran remarked that 
he had studied all his law books and could not find a single case where the 
principle contended for was established. ‘I suspect, sir,’ interrupted 
the judge, ‘I suspect that your law library is rather contracted.’ Curran, 
feeling the sneer at his poverty, looked the judge square in the face and 
replied: ‘It is true, my lord, that I am poor, and the circumstance has 
rather curtailed my library; my books are not numerous but they are 
select and I hope have been perused with proper dispositions. I have 
prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few 
good books rather than by the composition of a great many bad ones. 
I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I should be of my wealth, could I 
stoop to acquire it by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I 
shall at least be honest; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example 
shows me that an ill acquired elevation, by making me the more con¬ 
spicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notor¬ 
iously contemptible.’ To have committed Curran for contempt would 
have been to acknowledge the application of the sarcasm; and he was 
allowed to proceed, but, thinking the matter over, the judge suddenly 
said: ‘Sir, you are forgetting the respect which you owe to the dignity 
of the judicial character.’ ‘Dignity!’ exclaimed Curran, ‘My lord, upon 
that point I shall cite you a case from.a book of some authority, with 
which you are perhaps not unacquainted.’ 

“He then briefly recited the story of Strap in Roderick Random, who, 
having stripped off his coat to fight, intrusted it to a bystander. When 
the battle was over and he was well beaten, he turned to resume it, but 
the man had carried it off. Curran thus applied the tale: ‘So, my lord, 
when the person intrusted with the dignity of the judgment-seat lays 
it aside for a moment to enter into a disgraceful contest, it is in vain, 
when he has been worsted in the encounter, that he seeks to shelter him¬ 
self behind an authority which he has abandoned.’ ‘If you say another 
word. I’ll comrnit you,’ replied the angry judge; to whom Curran retorted: 
‘If your lordship shall do so, we shall both of us have the consolation of 
reflecting that I am not the worst thing your lordship has committed.’ ” 
— 'Whipple’s Success and its Conditions,’ 134; also 'Law and 
Lawyers,’ 26. 



LYMAN TRUMBULL (1813-1896), Illinois 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

“I have often been requested to give my estimate of Mr. Lincoln’s 
life and character. His death at the close of a great civil war, in which 
the government of which he was the head had been successful, and the 
manner of his taking off were not favorable to a candid and impartial 
review of his character. The temper of the public mind at that time would 
not tolerate anything but praise of the martyred President, and even 
now it is questionable whether the truthful history of his life by Herndon, 
his lifelong friend, and law partner for twenty years, will be received with 
favor. As I could not give any other than a truthful narration of Mr. 
Lincoln’s character, as he was known to me, I have hitherto declined to 
write anything for the public concerning him. Having known him at 
different times as a political adversary and a political friend, my oppor¬ 
tunities for judging his public hfe and character were from different 
standpoints. We were members of the Illinois House of Representatives 
in 1840. He was a Whig, and I a Democrat, but we had no controversies, 
political or otherwise. Indeed, Mr. Lincoln took very little part in the 
legislation of that session. It was the period when, as related by Mr. 
Herndon, he was engaged in love affairs which some of his friends feared 
had well-nigh unsettled his mental faculties. I recall but one speech he 
made during the session. In that he told a story which convulsed the 
House to the great discomfiture of the member at whom it was aimed. 
Mr. Lincoln was regarded at that time by his political friends as among 
their shrewdest and ablest leaders, and by his political adversaries as a 
formidable opponent. Contemporary with him in the legislature of 1840 
were Edward D. Baker, William A. Richardson, William H. Bissell, 
Thomas Drummond, John J. Hardin, John A. McClernand, Ebenezer 
Peck and others whose subsequent careers in the national councils, on the 
field of battle, and in civil life have shed lustre on their country’s Mstory. 
It is no mean praise to say of Mr. Lincoln that among his galaxy of young 
men convened at the capital of Illinois in 1840, to whom may be added 
Stephen A. Douglas, although not then a member of the legislature, he 
stood in the front rank. 

“As a lawyer, Mr. Lincoln was painstaking, discriminating, and 
accurate. He mastered his cases, and had a most fascinating and happy 
way of presenting them. He was logical, fair and candid. It was said 
of him by one of the most eminent judges who ever presided in Illinois 
that after Lincoln had opened a case he (the Judge) fully understood 
both sides of it. Some of Mr. Lincoln’s contemporaries at the bar were 
more learned and better lawyers, but no one managed a case, which he 
had time to thoroughly study and understand, more adroitly. The 
breaking up of the Whig and Democratic parties in 1854, growing out 
of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the opening of the territory 
to slavery, threw Mr. Lincoln and myself together politically. We were 
both opposed to the spread of slavery, and from the foundation of the 
Republican party till liis death we were in political accord. I do not 
claim to have been his confidant, and doubt if any man ever had his entire 
confidence. He was secretive, and communicated no more of his own 
thoughts and purposes than he thought would subserve the ends he had in 
view. He had the faculty of gaining the confidence of others by apparently 
giving them his own, and in that way attached to hii^self many friends. 
1 saw much of him after we became political associates, and can truth¬ 
fully say that he never misled me by word or deed, but he was one of the 
shrewdest men I ever knew. To use a common expression, he was "as 


716 


GEEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


cunning as a fox.’ He was a good judge of men, their motives, and pur¬ 
poses, and knew how to wield them to his own advantage. He was not 
aggressive. Ever ready to take advantage of the public current, he did 
not attempt to lead it. He did promulgate the artifice of war enacted by 
Congress forbidding army and navy officers from employing their forces 
to return slaves to their masters, under penalty of dismissal from the ser¬ 
vice, till more than six months after its passage. It was more than nine 
months after the enactment of a law by Congress declaring free all slaves 
of rebels captured or coming within the Union lines, or found in any place 
occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the Union 
that he issued the proclamation declaring free the slaves then within the 
rebel lines, all of whom, belonging to persons in rebellion, were made 
free by act of Congress as soon as the Union forces occupied the country, 
and till then the proclamation could not be enforced. When applied to 
by a friend, just previous to the meeting of the convention at Baltimore, 
which nominated him for a second term, to indicate what resolutions or 
policy he desired the convention to adopt, he dechned to suggest any. 
These and many other illustrations might be given to show that Mr. 
Lincoln was a follower and not a leader in public affairs. Without 
attempting to form or create public sentiment, he waited till he saw 
whither it tended, and then was astute to take advantage of it. Some 
of Mr. Lincoln’s admirers, instead of regarding his want of system, 
hesitancy and irresolution as defects in his character, seek to make them 
the subject of praise, as in the end rebellion was suppressed, and slavery 
abolished, during his administration, ignoring the fact that a man of 
more positive character, prompt and systematic action, might have 
accomplished the same result in half the time, and with half the loss of 
blood and treasure. 

“Mr. Lincoln was by no means the unsophisticated, artless man many 
took him to be. , Mr. Swett, a lifelong friend and admirer, writing to 
Mr. Herndon, says; ‘One great public mistake of his character, as 
generally received and acquiesced in, is that he is considered by the people 
of this country as a frank, guileless and unsophisticated man. There 
never was a greater mistake. Beneath a smooth surface of candor and 
apparent declaration of all his thoughts and feelings, he exercised the 
most exalted tact, and the widest discrimination. * * * dealing 

with men he was a trimmer, and such a trimmer as the world has never 
seen.’ (Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 537-8). And Herndon says in the 
same fife (p. 471): 

“ ‘He had a Avay of pretending to assure his visitor that in the choice 
of his advisers he was free to act as his judgment dictated, although 
David Davis, acting as his manager, at the Chicago Convention had 
negotiated with the Pennsylvania and Indiana delegations, and assigned 
places in the Cabinet to Simon Cameron and Caleb Smith, besides making 
other arrangements which Mr. Lincoln was expected to satisfy.’ 

“Another popular mistake is to suppose Mr. Lincoln free from ambition. 
A more ardent seeker after qffice never existed. From the time when 
at the age of twenty-three, he announced himself a candidate for the 
legislature from Sangamon County, till his death, he was almost Constantly 
either in office or struggling to obtain one. Sometimes defeated and often 
successful, he never abandoned the desire for office till he reached the 
Presidency the second time. Swett says, ‘He was much more eager for 
it the second time than the first,’ and such was known to his intimate 
friends to be the fact, though his manner to the public would have indicat¬ 
ed that he was indifferent to a second nomination. ‘When first a candidate 
for the Presidency,’ Mr. Herndon continues, ‘he wrote to infiuential 
party workers everywhere, promising money to defray the expenses of 
delegates to the convention favoring his nomination.’ 

“While ardently devoted to the Union, Mr. Lincoln had no well- 
defined plan for saving it, but suffered things to drift, watching to take 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


717 


advantage of events as they occurred. He was a judge of men and 
knew how to use them to advantage. He brought into his Cabinet 
some of the ablest men in the nation, and left to them the management of 
their respective departments. Tliis country never had an abler head of 
the Treasury Department than Salmon P. Chase. To his skillful manage¬ 
ment of the finances the country was indebted for the means to carry on 
the war of the rebellion, and bring it to a successful issue. For the dis¬ 
tinguished ability with which the State Department and the War Depart¬ 
ment were managed during the rebelhon, the country is greatly indebted 
to Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton. Other members of the Cabinet were men 
of great executive ability. Lincoln was unmethodical and without execu¬ 
tive ability; but he selected advisers who possessed these qualities in an 
eminent degree. 

“To sum up his character, it may be said that as a man he was honest, 
pure, kind-hearted and sympathetic; as a lawyer, clear-headed, astute 
and successful; as a politician, ambitious, shrewd and farseeing; as a 
public speaker, incisive, clear and convincing, often eloquent, clothing 
his thoughts in the most beautiful and attractive language, a logical 
reasoner, and yet most unmethodical in all his ways; as President, during 
a great civil war, he lacked executive ability, and that resolution and 
prompt action essential to bring it to a speedy and successful close; 
but he was a philanthropist and a patriot, ardently devoted to the Union 
and the equality and freedom of all men. He presided over the nation 
in the most critical period of its history, and lived long enough to see 
the rebellion subdued, and a whole race lifted from slavery to freedom. 
The fact that he was at the head of the nation, when these great results 
were accomplished, and of his most cruel assassination, before there 
was time to appreciate the great work that had been done during his 
administration, will forever endear him to the American people, and hand 
his name down to posterity as among the best, if not the greatest, of 
mankind.” 

—From letter to his son, Walter Trumbull, who died in 1891, from 
'among Senator Trumbull's papers. Horace White's Life of Trum¬ 
bull, 1^26-30. 

TRUMBULL’S REASON FOR NOT SUSTAINING ANDREW 
JOHNSON’S IMPEACHMENT 

“Once set the example of impeaching a President for what, when the 
excitement of the hour shall have subsided, will be regarded as insufficient 
cause, and no future President will be safe who happens to differ with a 
majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate on any measure 
deemed by them important, particularly if of a political character. 
Blinded by partisan zeal, with such an example before them they will 
not scruple to remove out of the way any obstacle to the accomplish¬ 
ment of their purpose, and what then becomes of the checks and balances 
of the Constitution, so carefully devised and so vital to its perpetuity? 
In view of the consequences likely to fiow from this day’s proceedings, 
should they result in conviction, on what my judgment tells me are 
insufficient charges and proofs, I tremble for the future of my country. 
I cannot be an instrument to produce such a result, and at the hazard of 
the ties of friendship and affection, till calmer times shall do justice to 
my motives, no alternative is left me but the inflexible discharge of duty.” 
— May, 1868, 'White's Life of Trumbull, 319. 

NEVER BORROWED MONEY 

Trumbull never borrowed money, never was in debt, never signed a 
promissory note, always paid cash down for real estate, and passed 
through life without pecuniary liabilities.” 

—Horace White, Life of Lyman Trumbull, 21. 


718 


CHEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


TRUMBULL ON DOUGLAS 

“In the Democratic party, Douglas had forged to the front by virtue 
of boldness in leadership, untiring industry, boundless ambition and 
self-confidence and horse-power. He had a large head surmounted by an 
abundant mane, which gave him the appearance of a lion, prepared to 
roar or to crush his prey, and not seldom, the resemblance was confirmed, 
when he opened his mouth on the hustings, or in the Senate Chamber. 
As a stump orator, sensational debater and party manager, he never has 
a superior in this country. Added to these gifts, he had a very attractive 
personality, and a wonderful gift for divining and anticipating the 
drift of public opinion. The one thing lacking to make him a man ‘not 
for an age but for all time,’ was a moral substratum. He was essentially 
an opportunist. Although his private life was unstained, he had no 
conception of morals in politics, and this defect was his undoing as a 
statesman.”— White's Life of Trumbull, 33. 

THE DOUGLAS—GOUDY—LINCOLN ESTIMATE 

In 1891, at his office in Chicago, W. C. Goudy told F. L. Stetson that 
Judge Douglas spent the night with him, at his house, in that city, 
previous to his debate with Lincoln; that after the evening meal. Judge 
Douglas exhibited considerable restlessness, pacing back and forth upon 
the floor of the room, evidently with mental preoccupation. The attitude 
of Judge Douglas was so unusual that Mr. Goudy felt impelled to address 
him, and said: “Judge Douglas, you appear to be ill at ease and under 
some mental agitation; it cannot be that you have any anxiety with 
reference to the outcome of the debate you are to have with Mr. Lincoln; 
you cannot have any doubt of your ability to dispose of him.” 

Whereupon, Judge Douglas, stopped abruptly, turned to Mr. Goudy, 
and said with great emphasis: 

“Yes, Goudy, I am troubled over the progress and outcome of this 
debate. I have known Lincoln for many years, and I have continually 
met him in debate. I regard him as the most difficult and dangerous 
opponent that I have ever met and I have serious misgivings as to what 
may be the result of this joint debate.”— White's Life of Trumbull, J^O. 

WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN 

“The best speech (against the Lecompton Bill), on the Republican 
side, was made by Fessenden, of Maine, than whom a more consummate 
debater or more knightly character and presence has not graced the Senate 
Chamber in my time, if ever.” — White's Life of Trumbull, 83. 

JOHN BROWN’S BOLDNESS 

“John Brown, with $4,000 worth of material of one kind and another, 
and twenty-nine men, undertook to do something which the government 
itself, with more than 1,000,000 trained soldiers, 500 warships, and $3,000- 
000,000, accomplished with difficulty, at the end of a four-year’s war, 
during which no negro insurrection, large or small, took place. Brown 
refused his counsel to put in a plea of insanity at his trial.”— Idein, 97. 

AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION—SLAVERY 

“But, sir, unlike the Senator from Oregon (Baker) I will never agree 
to put into the Constitution of the country a clause establishing or making 
perpetual slavery anywhere. No part of God’s soil shall ever be dedi¬ 
cated to African slavery by my act, never, sir. I will not interfere with 
it where I have no authority by the Constitution to interfere; but I 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


719 


never will consent, the people of the Northwest, numbering more in 
white population than all your Southern States together, never will 
consent by their act to establish African slavery anywhere. Why, 
sir, the seven States of the Northwest, at late Presidential election, cast 
300,000 more votes than all the fifteen Southern States together. Senators 
talk about the North and the South, and speak of having two Presidents, 
a Northern President and a Southern President, as if we had no such 
country as the Northwest, more populous with freemen than all the South. 
The people of the South and the people of the Bast both will, by and by. 
learn, if they have not already learned, that we have a country and a 
great and growing country in the Northwest; a free country, made 
free, too, by the act of Virginia herself. I do not propose to discuss 
the House Resolution. I have said on any and all proper occasions, 
and am willing to say at any time, to our brethren of the South, we have 
no disposition, and never had any, and have no power, if we had the 
disposition, to interfere with your domestic institutions.” 

—On Crittenden’s (of Ky.) Resohdions to Compromise with the 

South on Slavery, U. S. Senate, Mch. 2, ’61. 

VALLANDIGHAM 

“Vallandigham as a public speaker had no attractions, but rather, as 
it seemed to me, the tone and front of a fallen angel, defying the Al¬ 
mighty. There was neither honor nor persuasion nor conciliation in his 
make-up. He was cold as ice and hard as iron. Although born and bred 
in a free State, he avowed . himself a pro-slavery man. In the speech 
referred to (in the House, Jan. 14, ’63) he took two hours to prove: 

1. That the Southern Confederacy never could be conquered; 

2. That the Union could never be restored by war; 

3. That it could be restored by peace; 

4. That whatever else might happen, African slavery would be fifty¬ 
fold stronger at the end of the war than it had been at the beginning.” 

EMANCIPATION 

‘Tf the President had legal authority to issue the Emancipation 
Proclamation, then he, or a successor, could revoke it.” 

— White’s Life of Trumbull, 222. 

TWO THEORIES OF RECONSTRUCTION 

“There were two theories of reconstruction; one was that the act of 
secession annihilated the State Governments and put the inhabitants 
and their belongings in the condition of newly acquired territories, subject 
in all things to the conquering power (Sumner and Thad Stevens). 

“The other view was that every act of secession was null and void; 
that State sovereignty was suspended, but not extinguished in the 
Confederacy, and that when the rebellion was crushed it became the duty, 
the rightful nucleus of sovereignty, to assist them to set the State govern¬ 
ments up again; in harmony, however, with accomplished facts, including 
the abolishment of slavery.” 

—Adopted by Lincoln, White’s Life of Trumbull, 231-2. 

JOHN M. HARLAN—CIVIL RIGHTS DECISION 

“Harlan’s dissent in the Civil Rights Act, of 1866, is worth more 
than all other literature on the subject that the books contain.” 

— White’s Life of Trumbull, 276. 


720 


GKEAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN 

“As a debater engaged in the current business of legislation, the Senate 
has not had his equal in my time. No man could detect a sophistry or 
perceive a scheme or a job quicker than he, and none possessed the power 
to expose it more effectually. He was a practical, matter-of-fact man, 
utterly abhorring all show, pretension 'and humbug. * * * But, 

I did not rise so much to speak of the great abilities and noble traits 
of character which have made Fessenden’s death to be felt as a national 
calamity, as of the personal loss which I myself feel at his departure. 
Only three others are now left who were here when I came to the Senate, 
and there is but one who came with me. There has been no one here 
since I came to whom I oftener went for counsel and whose opinions 
I have been accustomed more to respect than those of our departed 
friend. There were occasions, during our fourteen years of service 
together when we differed about minor matters and had controversies, 
for the time unpleasant, but I never lost my respect for him, nor do I 
believe that he ever did for me. He was my friend more closely, perhaps, 
the last year or two than ever before. Like other Senators I shall miss 
him in the daily transactions of this chamber, and, perhaps, more than 
any other shall miss him, as the one person from whom I most frequently 
sought advice. I am not one of those, however, who believes that con¬ 
stitutional liberty, our free institutions, or the progress of the age, depend 
upon any one individual. When the great and good Lincoln was stricken 
down, I did not believe that the Government would fail, or liberty 
perish. Though his loss may have subjected the country to many trials 
it would not otherwise have had, still our Government stands and liberty 
survives. Another has taken Mr. Fessenden’s place; others will soon 
occupy ours, to discharge their duties better, perhaps, than we have done, 
and he among us today will be fortunate, indeed, if, when his work on 
earth is done, he shall leave behind him a life so pure and useful, a reputa¬ 
tion so unsullied, a patriotism so ardent, and a statesmanship so conscious 
as William Pitt Fessenden.”— Congressional Globe, 113, for 1869. 

JAMES SCHOULER ON TRUMBULL 

“The next acceptable candidate to sincere reformers was Lyman 
Trumbull, whose period of national service closely coincided with that 
of Adams, and whose favor to the present movement (civil service 
reform) presaged a final exit from politics should it fail of success. A 
man of slight build, who wore spectacles, modest and quiet in demeanor 
and of kindly manners, Trumbull, in his Senatorial career, which covered 
a whole historic era, was in speech and vote one of the most fearless and 
conscientious as also one of the wisest of all legislators in Washington. 
In the printed record of some twelve immortal years, he stands forth a 
giant in debate, morally and intellectually, and one would have thought, 
physically, as well, and recognized by this time, as possessed of one of 
the best legal minds in Congress, he showed what is rare enough among 
lawyers, who engage in party poHtics, the quality of clear discrimination.” 

—7 Schouler^s U. S. Hist., 212-13. 

CLARK E. CARR ON TRUMBULL 

“Trumbull was a man of singularly acute and analytic mind. Every 
proposition that came before him, whether of politics or of law, whether 
involving grave constitutional questions, or the appointment to some 
trmal office, was reasoned out by him without reference to pohcy or 
poHtical claims. He was regarded as the most cold-blooded man who ever 
appeared in pubhc life in Illinois. He was a native of Connecticut, had 
many characteristics of his Puritan ancestors. He never had anything 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


721 


like a political machine to support him, nor a coterie of politicians to 
manage his canvases; and yet for three successive terms, by the force of 
his intellectual power, he was elected and re-elected to the United States 
Senate, and would no doubt have been elected the fourth time but 
for his vote against the impeachment of President Johnson, which is 
now generally approved. He knew when he took that position that it 
was unpopular with his party, the Republicans; but as a legal proposition 
he subjected it to that thorough analysis for which he was distinguished, 
and voted with the Democrats. Except for him. President Johnson 
would have been convicted, under articles of impeachment, and removed 
from office; and a dangerous precedent thereby established. In the 
final judgment of mankind, when the historian shall consider the measures 
with which he was prominently connected as chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee of the Senate, reconstruction, constitutional amendments, 
impeachment, and all the rest, the character and attainments and achieve¬ 
ments of Lyman Trumbull will be properly appreciated. 

—*The Illinii/ by Clark E. Carr, 257. 

For Wm. P. Hackney’s tribute to Trumbull, See “Hackney” under 
“Fame.” 


THE IGNORANCE OF JEREMY BENTHAM 

“While Bentham was little versed in the history of English law, he 
was profoundly ignorant of Roman and Continental law. His view of 
the Roman law was so inadequate as to cause him to pronounce it ‘a 
parcel of dissertations badly drawn up.’ His fundamental idea was that 
the legislator must first arrange a proper code of laws upon a philosophy 
of human law borrowed from Helvetius, which considered a balancing of 
so called pleasure and pain that ignored the higher attributes of human 
spirit; that this code so arranged should be settled so that nobody of 
decision in regard to the meaning of its provisions could ever grow up 
around it; then this result should be made certain by never permitting 
any lawyer to become a judge, and that code so settled would be good 
and workable for any nation regardless of its existing law, or its past 
history or its racial or social characteristics. This is the secret of Ben- 
tham’s offers to make the same code for Turkey, for Egypt, for France, 
for Spain, for Portugal, for Russia, for Switzerland, for Morocco, for the 
States of our Union and for the new South American Repubhcs.” 

—John Maxcy Zane, in ‘Great Jurists of the World,’ 538. 


WM. M. EVARTS AND JOSEPH H. CHOATE 

“The great things Mr. Evarts said would be talked of long after dinner. 
I remember on one occasion his famous partner, Joseph H. Choate, who 
was a Harvard man, while Evarts was a graduate of Yale, introduced 
Mr. Evarts by saying that he was surprised that a Yale man, with all 
the prejudices of that institution against the superior advantages of 
Harvard, should have risked the coats of his stomach at a Harvard 
dinner. Mr. Evarts replied: ‘When I go to a Harvard dinner I always 
leave the coats of my stomach at home.’ ” 

— C. M. Depew’s ‘ Memories of 80 Years,’ 106. 




JOHN RANDOLPH TUCKER (1823-1897), Virginia 

A CONCRETE CASE IN EQUITY JURISPRUDENCE 

“The case of Langford v. Barnard was decided in the year 1595-’96 
(37th. Eliz.) Tothill, 134. The Merchant of Venice was published in 
the years 1598 and 1600. This case brought into collision the claim to 
the penalty which the law allowed the obligee on a penal bond, or the 
right of foreclosure of a mortgagee or land (or, ‘the pound of flesh,’ it 
might be), with the decree which equity made, that the penalty should 
be forbidden, when the thing was offered to be done which the penalty 
was designed to secure. Will Shakespeare, no more a technical lawyer 
then my noble old friend, in the offer wMch Equity, in the person of Portia, 
made to Shy lock to take his debt and release the penalty, took sides with 
the chancery against the law. He meant to depict the cruel injustice of 
the law and the perfect justice which chancery afforded by the equity 
of redemption and furnished an argument, which has, in the judicature 
of the English speaking people, established for three centuries a remedy 
the Doge of Venice never knew, but which the fair Portia, voicing the 
broad views of the great dramatic poet, suggested as the true solution 
of 'in re Shylock.' In the court of law the judgment was wrong on the 
pounds on which it was made to rest, as Mr. Green insisted; but even 
in that court was right on the point made by Mr. Holliday, and which 
Portia did not rely upon. But Shakespeare’s Portia showed what juris¬ 
prudence ought to be, in staying the hand of the cruel exactor of a mortal 
penalty, and compelling him to take his debt and be satisfied, thus saving 
the debtor from the penalty, but requiring him to do justice to the 
creditor. 

“Did not Shakespeare, the boon companion of the famous lawyers 
of the kingdom, write his great drama to show what jurisprudence should 
be in such a case, to satirize the harsh doctrines of the Common Law, 
and to vindicate the then recent, and now established, doctrine of Lang¬ 
ford V. Barnard?” 

—In the above Mr. Tucker describes three 'picturesque Virginia 
lawyers of the old school, W'tn. F. Gordon, Wm. Green and Alexander 
R. Holliday, and an argwment between them as to the soundness of 
Portia's decision, in the case styled by them, 'In Re Shylock.* 

Mr. Justice Harland says of John R. Tucker: “In my opinion, he 
was one of the foremost of the American lawyers of his generation,” 

CHUMSHIP OF TUCKER AND GARFIELD 

“The delightful chumship which existed between Tucker and Garfield 
was marked. Tucker was educated at the University of Virginia, and a 
Jeffersonian of Jeffersonians; Garfield was born of the humblest of parents, 
in the Western Reserve, and every drop of liis blood was New England 
Puritan. Later he was educated in Massachusetts, and was a Hamiltonian 
of the Hamiltonians, except that he was a heretic as to the dogma of 
protection. Both Tucker and Garfield were Mghly educated men, and 
when in Congress together they were fond of spending hours together 
discussing the ancient and modern classics. There was always a heap 
of the grown-up boy about Garfield. He loved to gush, though one of 
the most formidable debaters Congress ever knew, and perhaps his ac 
qiiired knowledge, gained from books, surpassed that of any other man 
in the public life of his day. If he and Blaine, or he and Ben Harrison had 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


723 


been fused and made one, what a giant he would have been! I have said 
that Garfield was much of the boy and very fervid. A case in point was 
when he exclaimed: 

“ ‘If Cicero were reincarnate and should visit these walks, Ran Tucker 
is the only man who could hold satisfactory converse with him.’ ” 

— Savoyard'$ Letter, Kansas City Star, Mar. 5, 1911. 

HISTORY SLEEPS 

In the Hayes-Tilden contest, before the Electoral Commission, and 
while William M. Evarts was discussing the law to the tribunal, the 
venerable historian, George Bancroft, nodded in sleep. Mr. Tucker, 
pointing to the sleeping historian, said in a stage whisper to those sitting 
near him, “History sleeps while fiction speaks.” 


JOHN VAN BUREN’S REPLY WHEN INTERRUPTED 

To a gentleman who interrupted John Van Buren, while making a 
political speech. Van Buren said: “Perhaps my friend will allow me to 
answer him with an anecdote. In my native village there was a patient 
to whom his physician said, ‘Your symptoms are dangerous, but a single 
remedy will check them. You will have to drink a quart of catnip tea 
in order to recover.’ ‘Then I must die.’ ‘Nonsense, you can swallow 
the liquid.’ ‘Ah, yes. Doctor, but you mentioned a quart and my stomach 
only holds a pint.’ ” “Perhaps,” concluded the speaker, still fastening his 
glittering eye—ancient mariner like—on the interrupter, “our friend’s 
brain yonder can only hold a small pint (pronouncing the word in the old 
fashioned style as pmt) of political wisdom .”—The Author. 


WHAT MAY BE SAID OF GOD 

“For as much as God Almighty is incomprehensible, it followeth that 
we can have no conception or image of the Deity; and consequently all 
his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any¬ 
thing concerning his nature; and not any conception of the same, save only 
this: That there is a God, for the effects we acknowledge naturally do 
include a power of their producing before they were produced, and that 
power presupposeth something existent that hath such power, and the 
thing so existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal, must 
needs have been produced by something before that, till we come to the 
Eternal, that is to say, the first power of ail powers and first cause of all 
causes, and this it is which all men conceive by the name of God, implying 
eternity, incomprehensibility and omnipotence ,”—Thomas Hobbes. 




SAMUEL UNTERMYER ( 


), New York 


THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 

“A passing survey of the intimate public relations of the Stock Exchange 
to our National and international financial life will demonstrate the 
enormity of the offense of omission of which Congress has been guilty 
in permitting its organization, management and operations to be con¬ 
ducted through all these years without supervision or control. Many 
of the vast illegitimate fortunes that have debauched our citizenship 
are attributable directly to that cause. For many years the pretended 
market prices of securities of our greatest corporations have been ‘rigged’ 
and manipulated at the will of a handful of gamblers and operators and 
the people of the country have been literally robbed of hundreds of 
millions of dollars through such transactions. Some of the best known 
names in the country were those of men who amassed great fortunes 
from the recognized business of ‘operators in the securities of given 
corporations that they were employed to manipulate, sometimes on the 
“bear” side, and sometimes on the “bull” side of the market.’ Nowhere 
was there any restraint upon the malign activities of these men or their 
powerful and respectable principals, among whom were numbered the 
greatest financiers of the country.” 

— ‘Speculatio7i on the Stock Exchange and Public Regulation of the 
Exchange,' Princeton, N. J., Dec. 29, 'IJf. 

REGULATION OF THE STOCK-EXCHANGE 

“Unless I wholly misapprehend the operation of our financial system, 
the regulation by law of the Stock-Exchange is an indispensable condi¬ 
tion precedent to the destruction of the control of great financial credits 
by a few men or to any effective corporate reform in this country. It 
is the illegitimate use of the facilities of this, the world’s greatest security 
market, that many of the vast predatory fortunes have been filched from 
the pubhc. The relation and importance of the exchange to corporate 
independence of banking domination are little understood. We shall 
accomplish nothing substantial in the direction of the coveted goal of 
financial emancipation toward which we are striving until this factor is 
appreciated and dealt with as an essential factor in the general scheme 
of reform.”— Idem. 

THE MONEY TRUST 

“Competition wiU not rear its head to give battle to the entrenched 
interests that are under the protecting wing of the men who wield this 
destructive power. No overt act is necessary on their part. The mere 
existence of the power is continuing threat. So long as they dominate the 
sources of credit and can terrorize every new venture so long wiU it con¬ 
tinue useless to attempt the emancipation of business. Disintegration 
of existing combinations will not in itself solve the problem. It must be 
supplemented by new competition with fresh young blood and compar¬ 
atively small beginnings. That is not possible whilst the present con¬ 
centration of the control of credits continues in a few hands. All legisla¬ 
tion must be directed primarily against its destruction and toward thus 
restoring freedom throughout the arteries of trade and finance.” 

—^The Relation of the Farmer to the Trust Question,' delivered in 
Chicago, 111., Apr. 15, 1914. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


725 


COMPETITION SHOULD BE REGULATED 

“Unrestricted ruinous competition should be regulated competition. 
The former invariably leads to monoply. The latter does away with the 
oppression of weak competitors and with every vestige of pretext for 
combination. The distinction between co-operation and combination is 
fundamental. The former is distinctly beneficent if so supervised and 
restricted that the levying of tribute upon the public is prevented. The 
latter is economically unsound and oppressive. Instead of the innumer¬ 
able secret and unlawful arrangements that are now tolerated, under 
cover of which there is now taken from the people ‘all that the traffic 
will bear,’ it will be the duty of the parties to submit their agreement to 
the Trade Commission. The latter, with the aid of its expert accountants, 
will determine whether the conditions are reasonable and fair to the public 
in the same way that the Interstate Commerce Commission now deter¬ 
mines the far more complicated question of rates. With such relief at 
hand public sentiment will support the rigid enforcement of the criminal 
law against all trusts and secret arrangements.”— Idem. 

HOLDING COMPANIES MAKE TRUSTS POSSIBLE 

“Incidentally it may be well to remember that but for the device of 
the holding company the majority of the trusts that are afflicting the 
country, especially the great ones, could never have been born. The 
history of the oppression that was practiced upon the minority in some 
of those cases to force them into the combination or into parting with 
their holdings constitutes one of the most disgraceful chapters in modern 
high finance, and that is certainly saying much.” 

—‘Some Needed Legislative Reforms in Corporate Management^ 

Hotel Astor, N. F., Jan. 5, 1911. 

INSURANCE COMPANIES NOT REPRESENTATIVE 

“The officials of these (life insurance) companies are in no sense 
representative of the policy-holders. They are mainly self-appointed 
custodians of other people’s money without real accountability except 
such as the State imposes. They masquerade as mutual companies 
controlled by the policy-holders, but they are such only in name. If 
all the officials were sent to jail you could not change the management. 
It would not be to anyone’s interest to try it. With the vast agency 
forces paid by the policy-holders but arrayed with management the 
strongest opposition is readily overwhelmed. One of the companies 
had at the end of 1909 over ten million policies in force, and have today 
over eleven million; its policy-holders consist mainly of working people 
with policies that average less than two hundred dollars each, or just 
about enough to bury them decently. A single circular to the pohcy- 
holders in that Company would cost about $400,000.”— Idem. 

THE TARIFF BILL NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR PLIGHT 

“Nor is the Tariff Bill to any appreciable extent responsible for our 
pHght. A downward revision was demanded by the people and recog¬ 
nized as necessary by all parties. The change has been an average of 
about 43% to an average of about 26%, and has been on the whole wisely 
distributed. It is the first Tariff Bill enacted in our history that was 
unselfish and uninfluenced by the demands of special interests, which 
have heretofore dictated this class of legislation. If with that percentage 
of protection we are unable to meet foreign competition in our country 
and stimulate our export business, we may as well count ourselves ‘out 
of the game’ in the world’s markets. The statistics for the first eight 


726 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


months of the operation of the new law show far less disturbance in the 
currents of trade than was fairly to be expected. We have been a shiftless, 
prodigal and unscientific people in our methods of manufacturing and 
marketing our goods. The unique shelter of the Tariff and the elimination 
of home competition through the Trusts and trade agreements have 
weakened our business virility, encouraged extravagance, substituted 
bureaucracy for individuality in our Trust-controlled industries and have 
thereby crippled our competitive power. With our superior labor 
and vast neutral resources we should be leading the world as an export 
manfacturing nation instead of which we are in imminent peril of ceasing 
to be a factor .”—^ Reasons and Remediest for our Business Troubles,' Pitts- 
burgh, Pa., May 22, 1914^. 

PUBLIC CONFIDENCE 

“The remedy is simple. Public confidence in corporate management 
must be restored. The existing legal machinery does not assume respon¬ 
sibility and punishment for the misdeeds of Big Business. The enactment 
of the pending bills properly strengthened will help accomplish that 
result. Ours is a rich country. Our wealth is fairly well distributed, 
notwithstanding the many hundreds of millions that have been confis¬ 
cated by these men in one way or another, by way of tribute or through 
gross neglect. A fraction of it can still be recovered by the shareholders, 
if they will stand together in each of these great corporations to enforce 
restitution and protection for the future. If the lessons of the past 
have taught them to manage their own affairs hereafter, it will have 
been worth the fearful cost. When they are able to do that as in former 
years, when these great properties were bult up and operated by their 
real owners, and not until then, the investing public here and abroad 
will again interest itself in our enterprises. Meantime, we can do our 
share toward reassuring the civilized world that we are not a Nation of 
freebooters and that we have sufficient of the capacity for self-govern¬ 
ment left to end the recklessness and lawlessness of High Finance so that 
capital will hereafter be as safe with us as in other countries.”— Idem. 

THE DUTY OF A PROSECUTING ATTORNEY 

“It is with sincere regret and reluctance that I assert that save in rare 
instances the modern Prosecutor does not stand between the People 
and the accused. He and his assistants too often measure the success 
of their labors by the number of convictions they have secured. It is a 
false and brutal conception of duty that is responsible for grave injustice, 
but it is none the less true that it exists. Under its influence the Prose¬ 
cutor becomes a partisan advocate, blind to the strength of the defense, 
unwilling to voluntarily expose the weakness of the people’s case. The 
People are as deeply interested in proving the innocence of the accused, 
where he is unable to defend himself, as to prove his guilt. By all means, 
let us have a Public Defender in the interest of fair play and common 
humanity.”— 'The Evils and Remedies of the Administration of the Criminal 
Law,' Philadelphia, Pa., Apr. 9, 1910. 

THE REGULATION OF BUSINESS 

“The regulation of business is of course one of the most important 
functions of government, and one without the constant exercise of which 
business would not be possible. * * * people are beginning to 

realize that the methods now being adopted for the enforcement of the 
law will accomphsh nothing beyond mere changes in the form of organiza¬ 
tion and new devices for evading the spirit of the law.” 

—'Government Regulation of the Trusts with Special Reference to the 
Sherman Act,' N. Y., Nov. 22, 1911. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


727 


SHERMAN LAW SHOULD BE MODIFIED 

“That the Law (the sherman Law) is inadequate and the machinery 
of the Courts is ill-adapted to the genuine enforcement of judgments of 
dissolution, we believe and respectfully insist. That as supplementing 
the Sherman Law, there is needed and should be constituted a body 
with powers over Inter-State industrial corporations, similar to the 
powers of the present Inter-State Commerce Commission over Rail¬ 
roads, to which shall be entrusted the disintegration of all corporations 
adjudged to be existing in violation of the Law, subject to review and 
control by the Courts, by which the judgments were rendered. This 
Commission would have the duty of supervising the execution of the 
judgment and enforcing obedience to it; of seeing to it that the dis¬ 
integration is not merely Pickwdckan, but that it is made and kept 
real and effective.”— Idem. 

NEED AN EMPLOYERS’ LIABILITY LAW 

“With our insufferable provincial narrowness and egotism we generally 
manage, in the end, to begin about where they (foreign nations) leave 
off, on these questions of government. It takes us some time, but we get 
there eventually, and so we shall, I hope, in course of time have an 
Employers’ Liability Law; and a National Insurance Law, such as Eng¬ 
land is now copying from Germany. In time, I have no doubt, we shall 
get a scientific Corporation Law that will enforce publicity and protect 
the investor instead of the present jumble of laws that are a premium 
upon corporate laxity and dishonesty. We may even reach the point of 
just and civilized methods of taxation where they belong. We may even, 
when we become sufficiently wise, learn from them to govern our Cities, 
so that they will cease to be nests of corruption, and be fit for human 
habitation. But, we must first cease scoffing at what we do not understand 
and begin to realize that unparalleled as is our genius as money grub¬ 
bers and in many more laudable directions we are still children in the 
science of Government. If our experience with this question has not 
convinced us of that fact, we are indeed hopeless.”— Idem. 

THE INTER-STATE COMMERCE COMMISSION 

“The accomphshments of the Inter-State Commerce Commission is 
the greatest triumph of modern times in scientific Government. No one 
who has watched at close range our progress in securing control over the 
railroads will doubt our capacity for progressive government in that 
direction. It saved us from government ownership of the railroads, as 
the like regulation of Industrial Corporations will save us from socialism. 
Of all the accomplishments of President Roosevelt’s Administration, 
the standards he set in the selection of the personnel of the Commission, 
and the working of that problem, will be an enduring monument to 
his courage, foresight and constructive genius.”— Idem. 

CAPITAL AND LABOR IN U. S., ENGLAND AND GERMANY 

“Ours is the most reactionary of all civihzed countries in the pending 
peaceful revolution for the readjustment of the division between Capital 
and Labor. England and Germany are half a century in advance of us 
in all that pertains to the proper protection of labor and the scientific 
distribution of the burdens of taxation. Their systems of insurance 
against accident, old age, sickness and unemployment and the new 
English land tax laws are the models of constructive legislation that we 
shall follow, when we have reached their stage in the outward march 
toward industrial and economic liberty. This small but powerful 


728 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


privileged class of ours postponed the levying of an income tax for almost 
a quarter of a century, although it had long been recognized, the world 
over, to be the most just form of taxation. With their vast power and 
macliinery to manufacture and mislead public opinion through their 
press and subsidized organs, they are enabled to make an amount of 
noise and stir up a degree of uncertainty and alarm over every attempt 
at progressive legislation, grossly disproportioned to their real influence, 
and dangerously misleading.” 

—‘yf Legislative Program, to Restore Business Freedom and Confi¬ 
dence,' Chicago, III., Jan. 5, 191J^. 


MARTIN VAN BUREN 

“Van Buren,” says John Fiske in his “Historical Essays,” (vol. 1, 
348) “was the greatest master of political economy, and the most lucid 
conception was had by him of the proper sphere of our government, of 
all the Presidents; and Shepards’ Life of him is the ablest of the ‘States¬ 
men Series.’ ” 

In the spring of 1816, Van Buren moved to Albany and entered at once 
upon an extraordinary professional and political career. He first took 
his seat in the State Senate, January, 1813. His dress and personal appear¬ 
ance were subjects of satirical attacks by his enemies. He was dressed 
in a green coat, buff breeches, white topped boots and carried in his right 
hand a light ivory-headed cane. These with his foppish bearing, caused 
him to appear more like a sporting man than a Senator. Being slight in 
form and small in stature, his person was sneered at. Soon after his ad¬ 
mission to practice he formed a partnership with Benjamin F. Butler, and 
the firm was soon considered one of the most distinguished in the state 
of New York. Not only in the legal world, but for its controlling power 
in politics. One of Van Buren’s greatest secrets of success was his dis¬ 
cernment in the selection of his friends and allies. In this he excelled the 
subtlety of Richelieu, Buckingham and Halifax. He used to say he would 
rather walk twenty miles to see,a man than to write him a letter. 

— The Author. 


RICHARD ZOUCHE 

“Zouche is the greatest of the English school of international jurists 
and publicists; and the subsequent traditions of this school of writers, 
not to mention many continental writers of the positive school, owe 
much to his influence and example. * * * jjis wide learning and 

great abihty, judicial as well as literary, were recognized in his own time; 
and his opinions, both in his lifetime and after his death, were regarded 
as possessing high authority. He occupies an important place in the 
history of the law of nations. His principal book was the first real 
treatise on international law.” 

—Coleman Phillipson, ^Great Jurists of the World,' 220-2Jt7. 

{Zouche was born in Wiltshire, England, 1590 and died 1661). 




ZEBULON B. VANCE (1830-1894), North Carolina 


THE JEW 

“The Jew is beyond doubt the most remarkable man of this world, 
past or present. Of all the stories of the sons of men there is none so wild, 
so wonderful, so full of extreme mutation, so replete with suffering and 
horror, so abounding in extraordinary providences, so overflowing with 
scenic romance. There is no man who approaches him in the extent and 
character of the influence which he has exercised over the human family. 
His history is the history of om* civilization and progress in this world, 
and our faith and hope in that which is to come. From him have we de¬ 
rived the form and pattern of all that is excellent on earth or in heaven. 
If, as DeQuincey says, the Roman emperors as the great accountants for 
the happiness of more men, and men more cultivated than ever before, 
were entrusted to the motions of a single will, had a special, singular 
and mysterious relation to the secret councils of heaven, thrice may it 
be said of the Jew. Palestine, his home, was the central chamber of God’s 
administration. He was at once the grand usher to these glorious courts, 
the repository of the councils of the Almighty, and the envoy of the divine 
mandate of the conscience of man. He was the priest and faith-giver 
to mankind, and as such, in spite of the jibe and jeer, he must ever be 
considered as occupying a peculiar and sacred relation to all other poeples 
of this world. Even now, though the Jews have long since ceased to exist 
as a consolidated nation inhabiting a common country, and for 1800 years 
have been scattered far and near over the wide earth, their strange customs, 
their distinct features, personal peculiarities, and their scattered unity, 
make them still a wonder and an astonishment. 

“Though dead as a nation, as we speak of nations, yet they live. Their 
ideas All the world and move the wheels of progress, even as the sun, when 
he sinks behind the western hills, yet Alls the heavens with the remnants 
of his glory. As the destruction of matter in one form is made necessary 
to its resurrection in another, so it would seem that the perishing of the 
Jewish nationality was essential in order to insure the universal acceptance 
and the everlasting establishment of Jewish ideas. Never before was 
there an instance of such general rejection of the person and character, 
and the acceptance of the doctrines and dogmas of a people. 

“We admire with unlimited admiration the Greek and Roman, but 
reject with contempt their crude and beastly divinities. We affect to 
despise the Jew, but accept and adore the pure conception of a God 
which he taught us, and whose real existence the history of the Jew 
more than all else establishes. When the court chaplain of Frederick 
the Great was asked by that bluff monarch for a brief and concise 
summary of the argument in support of the truths of the Scripture, he 
instantly replied, with a force to which nothing could be added, ‘The Jew, 
your Majesty, the Jews.’ 

“I think it may be truthfully said that there is more of average wealth, 
intelligence and morality among the Jewish people than there is among 
any other nation of equal numbers in the world. If this be true, if it be 
half true, when we consider the circumstances under^ which it has all 
been brought about, it constitutes in the eyes of thinking men the most 
remarkable moral phenomenon ever exhibited by any portion of the human 
family. For not only has the world given the Jew no help, but all that 
he has ever received, and that but rarely, was to be left alone. To escape 
the swoM, the rack, the fire and utter spoiling of his goods, has indeed 
for centuries been to liim a blessed heritage, as the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land. 


730 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“The physical persecution of the Jews has measurably ceased among 
all nations of the highest civilization. There is no longer any proscrip¬ 
tion left upon their political rights in any land where the English tongue 
is spoken. I am proud of the fact. But there remains among us an un¬ 
reasonable prejudice of which I am heartily ashamed. Our toleration 
will not be complete until we put it away also, as well as the old instru¬ 
ments of physical torture. 

“I agree with Lord Macaulay that the Jew is what we have made hirn. 
If he is a bad job, in all honesty we should contemplate him as the handi¬ 
work of our own civilization. If there be, indeed, guile upon his lips or 
servility in his manner, we should remember that such are the legitimate 
fruits of oppression and wrong, and that they have been, since the pride 
of Judah was broken and his strength scattered, his only means of turning 
aside the uplifted sword and the poised javelin of him who sought to 
plunder and slay. Indeed, so long has he schemed and shifted to avoid 
injustice and cruelty, that we can perceive in him all the restless watch¬ 
fulness which characterizes the hunted animal. To this day the cast of 
the Jew’s features, in repose, is habitually grave and sad, as though 
the very plowshares of sorrow had marked its furrows across their faces 
forever, 

“ ‘And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet? 

And when shall Zion’s songs again seem sweet? 

And Judah’s melody once more rejoice 

The heart that leaped before its heavenly voice? 

Tribes of the wandering foot and weary heart. 

How shall ye flee away and be at rest? 

The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave. 

Mankind their country—Israel but the grave!’ 

“The hardness of Christian prejudice having dissolved, so will that of 
the Jew. The hammer of persecution having ceased to beat upon the 
iron mass of their stubbornness, it will cease to consolidate and harden, 
and the main strength of their exclusion and preservation will have 
been lost. They will, perhaps, learn that one sentence of our Lord’s 
Prayer which it is said is not to be found in the Talmud, and which is the 
keynote of the difference between Jew and Gentile: ‘Forgive us our 
trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us.’ If so, they will 
no longer refuse to sing the songs of Zion because they are captives in a 
strange land. 

“I believe that there is a morning to open yet for the Jews, in heaven’s 
good time, and if that opening shall be the brightest that ever dawned 
upon a faithful people. May the real spirit of Christ yet be so triumph¬ 
antly infused amongst those who profess to obey His teachings, that with 
one voice and one hand they will stay the persecutions and hush the 
sorrows of these, their wondrous kinsmen, put them forward into the 
places of honor and the homes of love, so that all the lands in which 
they dwell shall be not home to them alone, but to all the children of 
men who, through much tribulation and with heroic manhood, have 
waited this dawning with a faith whose constant cry through all the dreary 
watches of the night has been: ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
Him.’” 

—Zebulon Blair Vance. A North Carolina lawyer; Member of 
Congress, 1858-61; Governor N. C., 1862-65; U. S. Senator, 1870-72, 
but on account of participating in the Confederate army was refused 
admission; again Governor, 1877-78; from 1879-9J^, was again U. S. 
Senator. The above extract is from a lecture, delivered in 1882, and 
thereafter in various places, and is called his greatest platform dis¬ 
course. 


GEORGE G. VEST (1830-1904), Missouri 


EULOGY ON THE DOG 

“Gentlemen of the jury: The best human friend a man has in this 
world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter 
that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who 
are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness 
and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money 
that a man has he may lose. It flies from him, perhaps, when he needs 
it most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-con¬ 
sidered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us 
honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice 
when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely un¬ 
selfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never 
deceives him, the one that never proves ungrateful and treacherous, is 
his dog. 

“A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health 
and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground where the wintry wind 
blows and the snow drifts fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s 
side. He Avill kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the 
wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. 
He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When 
all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputa¬ 
tion falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journeys 
through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast 
in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher 
privilege than that of accompanying, to guard against danger, to fight 
against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and his body 
is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if aU other friends pursue 
their way, there by the graveside may the noble dog be found, his head 
between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful 
and true even in death.’’ 

—George G. Vest for the 'plaintiff in a suit for the killing of a dog, tried 
in Northern Missouri. The jury returned a verdict for $200, the 
amount sued for, in about two minutes. The defense was represented 
by Senator Francis M. Cockrell. 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AS EXEMPLIFIED BY JEFFERSON 

“The Democratic party holds that there should be no partnership 
between the government and any individual or class, but all the benefits 
and burdens of the government should be equally distributed, every 
citizen being protected in life, liberty and property, and made the archi¬ 
tect of his own fortune. 

“It holds that all property should be taxed in proportion to the pro¬ 
tection received from the government; and it does not believe in the system 
under which a capitalist pays no more upon his hundreds of millions to 
support the national government than does the poorest citizen who^must 
in war risk life and limb to protect these millions. , t 

“The Democratic party is national, not sectional, and cannot exist 
on one issue. It is coexistent with the whole Union and with the autonomy 
of our government. You may believe in the single gold standard and I 
in the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, but if we are Jeffer¬ 
sonian Democrats there is no other political home for a hundred years in 
peace and war, sunshine and shadow, in every township, county and State 
of the entire Union. 


732 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“No greater calamity could come to this country or the world than 
the disruption of the great organization which was founded by the author 
of the Declaration of Independence. Upon the canvass of the past 
Washington and Jefferson stand forth the central figures in our struggle 
for independence. The character of the former was so rounded and 
justly proportioned that so long as our country lives, or a single com¬ 
munity of Americans can be found, Washington will be ‘First in war, 
first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.’ 

“To Washington we are more indebted than to any one man for national 
existence; but what availed the heroism of Bunker Hill, the sufferings of 
Valley Forge, or the triumph of Yorktown, if the government they 
established had been but an imitation of the monarchy from which we 
had separated? To Jefferson we owe eternal gratitude for his sublime 
confidence in popular government, and his unfaltering courage in de¬ 
fending at all times and in all places the great truth, that ‘All govern¬ 
ments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ ” 
“The love of liberty is found not in palaces, but with the poor and 
oppressed. It flutters in the heart of the caged bird, and sighs with the 
worn and wasted prisoner in his dungeon. It has gone with martyrs to 
the stake, and kissed their burning lips as the tortured spirit winged its 
flight to God! ^ 

“In the temple of this deity Jefferson was high priest! For myself, I 
worship no mortal man, living or dead; but if I could kneel at such a 
shrine, it would be with uncovered head and loving heart at the grave 
of Thomas Jefferson.” 

— ‘Jefferson’s Passports to Immortality,' before the Jefferson Club of 
St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 31, 1895, at the unveiling of the bronze bust of 
Thos. Jefferson, by Benjamin Harney. 


LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD 

“No doubt ‘Liberty enlightening the World’ in modern history finds 
its greatest instance in that torch which was lighted here; but from the 
enthusiasm and the inexorable logic of French philosophy on the ‘Equality 
of Man’ was furnished we can never say how much of the zeal and of the 
courage that enabled our forefathers to shape the institutions of equality 
and fiberty here, and all can mark the reaction upon France by which 
our interests, our prosperity under them encouraged, ennobled and 
maintained the struggle for liberty there which overthrew ancient 
establishments and raised in their place new. And now both countries, 
at least, stand on the same happy combination of liberty regulated by 
law and law enlightened by liberty. And this great structure, emblem 
of so much else, example of so much else, guide to so much else, yet 
this emblem, this example, this guide is of the union between the genius 
and enthusiasm of liberty, the graceful statue and the massive and compact 
pedestal of our own granite by which it is upheld. Liberty can only be 
supported by solid and sober institutions, founded upon law as built 
upon a rock; and the structure solid and sober which sustains it, if liberty 
has fled, is but a shapeless and unsightly mass that is no longer worthy 
of respect as a structure to be torn apart until it can better be rebuilt 
as the home of liberty.” 

— Wm. M. Evarts to the officers of the French national ship ^ I sere,’ 
which brought over the Bartholdi statue from France, at Chamber 
of Commerce, N. Y. City, June 2If, 1885. 




DANIEL W. VOORHEES (1827-1897), Indiana 


THE SEDUCER OF BLACK’S SISTER 

“His crime is a thousandfold blacker than murder, yet there are no 
scaffolds for him. For the betrayed and ruined woman there is nothing 
left in life except the pain of living. The joy of existence never comes 
again. When we see the autumn leaf falling to the ground, and the white 
shroud of winter over the face of the fields, we are blest with the certain 
hope that the soft air of spring will after a little come back to us and 
renew in our midst the splendors of the beautiful world; that the fresh, 
green sward, adorned with fiowers, will again spread at our feet, and the 
deep foliage of the forest will leave its bright canopy over our heads. 
But to the soul that has loved, trusted and lost there comes no second 
spring. The solemn sky of autumn and the chilling winds of the winter 
alone remain to her. No glad and golden summer awaits her in the future. 
A scorched and barren desert without verdure, without trees or plant, 
or blossom, or shrub, or one single cooling fountain at which to rest in all 
the desolate pilgrimage, lies before her tired and faltering footsteps. 
She makes the rest of her journey, too, alone. The leper’s taint is upon 
her in the eyes of the world, and friends fall off and avert their faces. 
And with such a spectacle as this before you, are you willing to say that 
the man who thus curses the entire existence of one whose sole offense has 
been her blind, unreasoning devotion to him should pass unscathed and 
unwhipped of justice? Such a decision would spurn and trample under 
your feet the holiest and tenderest interests, affections and loves of human¬ 
ity, and would blaspheme all the attributes of a just and righteous God. 
Does some one, however, who is careful of the life of the destroyer, pro¬ 
fane his subject with a suggestion of damages as a measure of legal redress? 
The bare thought stifles an elevated nature with feelings of loathing and 
disgust. Who can estimate the value of family honor? Who shall 
remunerate you for the stolen and defiled members of your household? 
As well might you attempt to fix the value of a lost and ruined soul in 
hell. ‘What will a man not give for his own soul?’ And will he not give 
the same or even a higher ransom, if need be, for the salvation of wife, 
mother, daughter, sister? Without them in their purity the regions of 
time and earth would be filled with fiery tortures, and the condition of 
fallen spirits in eternity could be no worse. Can you pay the husband 
for his wife, the son for his mother, the brother for his sister, and the 
father for his daughter? Can you make atonement to the heartbroken 
woman herself for violated vows and wanton perfidy ? Can she or any of 
those that love her be redeemed to their original estate by the assessment 
of damages? A division of property between the social outlaw and his 
prey may be just, but as a mode of punishment it is vain and void of 
meaning. Who, also, would have such gain? If a judgment was taken 
in favor of the husband or father, in whose behalf an action lies, what 
a revolting acquisition to his fortune it would be! In what way would 
he expend it? If the husband invests it in ‘ships that go down to the sea,’ 
he makes his ventures into foreign lands and distant waters upon the wages 
rendered to him by a jury for his wife’s infamy. He traffics upon the honor 
of her whose dear and precious head once lay in its sweet sleep of fidelity 
upon his confiding heart. If his argosies come home from successful 
voyages, they are freighted with gains founded upon the dishonor of his 
bed, the debasement of his name and the overthrow of all his fireside 
gods. His bills of lading stare at him as the reward of his submission to 
the lowest depths of degradation ever fathomed by the most abject 
spirits of the human race. The articles of merchandise which he unpacks 


734 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


and ofifers in exchange at his counter would salute him perpetually of 
his hideous bereavement. The ghost of his murdered peace would arise 
and confront him wherever he turned.” 

—Dan iel W. Voorhees in Defense of Crawford Black for the killing 
of W. W. McKaig, Jr., tried in Frederick City, Md., 1871. The 
defendant teas 'promptly acqnitted by the jvry. 

IMMORTALITY 

“ ‘Shall this mortal put on immorality; shall we meet again to part 
no more?’ The philosophy of ancient paganism and the scientific thought 
of modern unbelief have alike tried, and tried in vain, to wrench apart 
the iron jaws of death and exhort an answer from the dumb and silent 
mystery of the tomb. Not a gleam of light, not a ray of hope, not even 
the twinkling of a distant star comes from the great intellectual school 
of materialism. There can, indeed, be but one answer to this tremendous 
question, so vital, so personal to all. The advent of the Messiah, the 
inhabitant of two worlds coming from the realms of eternity to the realms 
of time, returning whence He came, triumphing over death and robbing 
the grave of its victory, furnishes absolute proof beyond denial or dis¬ 
cussion that an immortal world exists and an immortal life. He who 
walked the waters and made the winds be still, alone of all the manifesta¬ 
tions of power this earth has ever known can banish the secret dread, 
the inward horror of falling into naught. Plato reasoned well, but the 
immortality of the soul, which was to him merely a pleasing hope, a 
dim uncertainty, becomes a proven, fixed reality by the coming of the 
Messiah; by the opening of the King’s highway between the two worlds, 
the visible and the invisible. In His divinity He came and He went; 
He passed from one world to the other both ways; the route He proclaimed 
remains, linking time and eternity together and affording to the human 
soul its only safe assurance that he will live hereafter. In view of that 
divinity, therefore, we listen without wonder or doubt to His own grand 
conclusions of the whole matter, to His own lofty anthem and promise of 
eternal life. ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die.’ 

“And who is he that would gainsay this pean of victory for the human 
soul in the hope of immortality? Who is he that would silence its strains 
of peace? Who is he that would rob the parting soul of its music, the 
beloved faces that have gone before, making welcome from the sky? 
Who is he that would draw the black curtains of annihilation around the 
dying bed ard bolt and bar the portals of the tomb with cold despair? 
Who is he that would force entrance into the chamber of death to blight 
and destroy that sublime faith which alone can pluck tears of anguish 
which come as a comforter in every trial, which wreathes with smiles 
the dying face, even in the bright morning of life, in its noonday prime 
and as the sun of old age is going down. Far more merciful would it 
be to put poison in the wells and fountains of burning deserts where 
perishing travelers stoop to drink. 

“If life is to end here, a mere span on the dial plate of time, a fleeting 
shadow that abides not; if life here is but the insect existence of a single 
summer season, then indeed may the peasant and the philosopher and 
all classes between them make intense and prolonged inquiry whether 
such a life is worth living, whether any intelligent being with free choice 
would enter upon its brief unsatisfying scenes, knowing their inevitable 
termination to be in the black darkness of a sunless, starless, incompre¬ 
hensible nihilism; in a waveless, motionless, frozen, dead sea of annihi¬ 
lation. 

“But away with this vision of gloom, this dream of horror, this night¬ 
mare of the soul! The Christian faith neither darkens nor discredits 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


733 


the destiny of the human race; its mission is one of hope, promise and 
happiness in all pathways of life. To all the children of men of every 
faith it comes in blessings; to the bhnd agnostic, who is proud of his 
bhndness, to the groping unbeliever, who boasts of his darkness, and even 
to the eloquent scoffer, with his bitter tongue, as well as to the faithful 
followers of the cross, to one and all it comes with messages of truth 
and love, mercy and everlasting life in the name of the divine Master.” 
— The above was sent by Daniel W. Voorhees, the author of it, to 
Dr. Stephen A. Northup, of Kansas City, Kansas, for that ministers 
book, “/I Cloud of WitJiesses.'^ 

Mr. Voorhees was born in Butler Co., Ohio, 1827, and died in Terre 
Haute, Ind., 1897. He had a wide reputation as an orator and was popu¬ 
larly known as “The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash.” 

RETORT TO SENATOR INGALLS 

“The Senator from Kansas (Ingalls, who had just made a denunciatory 
speech against Voorhees’ war record) reminds one of a peacock on a 
barn-yard fence, posing of a summer’s morning, looking at his own feathers 
as they gleamed in the sun, and vocalizing the whole neighborhood with 
Ms harsh, unmusical and unmeaning cries, unmindful of the fact that there 
are more useful fowls in the barn-yard.” 


THE ROYAL CORN 

“Glorious corn, that more than all the sisters of the field wears tropic 
garments. Nor on the shore of Nilus or of Ind does nature dress her 
forms more splendidly. My God, to live again that time when for me 
half the world was good and the other half unknown! And now again, 
the corn, that in its kernel holds the strength that shall, (in the body of 
the man refreshed), subdue the forest and compel response from every 
stubborn field, or, shining in the eye of beauty, make blossoms of her 
cheeks and jewels of her lips and thus make for man the greatest inspira¬ 
tion, to well-doing—the hope of companionsMp of that sacred, warm 
and well embodied soul, a woman. 

“Aye, the corn, the Royal Corn, witMn whose yellow heart there is 
of health and strength for all the nations. The corn triumphant, that with 
the aid of man hath made victorious procession across the tufted plain 
and laid foundation for the social excellence that is and is to be. This 
glorious plant transmuted by the alchemy of God, sustains the warrior 
in battle, the poet in song, and strengthens everywhere the thousand 
arms that work the purposes of life. Oh, that I had the voice of song, or 
skill to translate into tones the harmonies, the symphonies and oratorios 
that roll across my soul, when standing sometimes by day and sometimes 
by night upon the borders of this verdant sea. I note a world of promise 
and then before one-half the year is gone I view its fruition and see its 
heaped gold await the need of man. Majestic, fruitful, wondrous plant! 
Thou greatest among the manifestations of the wisdom and love of God 
that may be seen in all the fields or upon the hillsides, or in the valleys.” 

—Richard Oglesby, of Illinois, to the Fellowship Club, Chicago, Sep. 

9, 189Jy. 



TIMOTHY WALKER (1806-1856) Ohio 


DEFENDING BAD CAUSE 

“There is not, perhaps, a more difficult question in casuistry than 
that which every lawyer has to decide in determining the nature and 
extent of his professional obligations. We are, however, to remember 
at the outset, that in becoming attorneys, we do not cease to be moral 
agents; that in pledging ourselves to omr clients, we do not also pledge 
to them our consciences; and therefore, in requiring us to do for them 
what we should blush to think of doing for ourselves. It is also obvious 
that even on selfish principles, honesty is the best policy for us, as it is 
for all other men; and, therefore, that in consultations with clients, we 
are not only morally bound to tell them frankly our real opinions, but 
it is manifestly our interests so to do, because otherwise we shall soon 
cease to be consulted. Again, it is clear that in conducting proceedings 
through the various stages of Htigation, we can never be justified in 
attempting to mislead the court or jury, by wilfully misrepresenting the 
law or the facts. Thus far there can be no room for hesitation. But, 
if we believe that our chent has the wrong side, and have candidly told 
him so, are we then justified in undertaking his cause, if he should persist 
in having it litigated ? This is a question of no small difficulty, and it 
arises in two classes of cases; namely, first, when we believe the law to be 
against our client; and secondly, when though the law may be with him, 
the abstract justice of the case appears to be against him. With regard 
to the first, when we think the law to be against him, it would seem 
that after so informing him, if he should still persist, we need not hesitate 
to act for him; because we are not infallible, and peradventure the law 
may turn out to be the other way; or he may have justice on his side, 
though the law may seem against him, and in either case he ought not 
to be cut off from the chances of htigation. The chief difficulty then 
arises in the second class of cases, where we believe justice and right to 
be against our client, though the law may be with him. But even here, 
and I have come to the conclusion that no principle of moral obhgation 
prohibits from prosecuting his cause. In the first place, I am not an in¬ 
fallible judge of right and wrong, and possibly I may be mistaken; but 
at all events, I am not his conscience-keeper. I undertake only to assert 
his legal rights; and if, in so doing, I make use of no chicanery or decep¬ 
tion, I come out of the cause with clean hands. The question of abstract 
justice is with him, and not with me; and I am as much justified in 
conducting his cause, as the jqdge is in deciding it for him. But there is 
a more comprehensive view conducing to the same result. Every man, 
as a general Condition of the social compact, has a right to have his case 
fairly presented before the court; and it is the province of counsel to 
assist him in so doing. Now altho there may be particular cases, which 
considered by themselves ought not to be prosecuted, yet as no line of 
demarkation can be drawn beforehand to indicate which these are; if 
it were the duty of counsel to decide each case the preliminary moral 
question, whether they ought to undertake it, their decision against 
any case would be prejudging of its merits, which might operate preju¬ 
dicially upon the final result; and on this account it is a good general 
rule that counsel are not to be held responsible for the moral character of 
the cause they advocate, but only for the manner in which they discharge 
their duty.”— In his '^American Law,'’' pp. 672-3, written in 1837. Judge 
Walker with J. C. Wright, founded in Cincinnati, 0., a law school in 
1835 of which Walker was professor till 18J^Ji.. In 18^3 he founded 
‘The Western Law Journal,” of which he was editor for several years. 


R. M. WANAMAKER, Ohio 

WE THE PEOPLE, OR WE THE JUDGES 

“During the first century of our Government the Supreme Court of 
the U. S. confined its doctrine of nullifying leglislative acts chiefly and 
sparingly to questions pertaining to the organization of courts and 
judicial procedure; questions relating to the exercise of powers not dele¬ 
gated in the Constitution; interference with state powers; ex post facto 
laws; laws impairing obhgations of contract; denial of trial by jury and 
other fundamental individual rights, as recognized generally by the laws 
of all civilized lands. But following the adoption of the 14th Amendment, 
the nullified laws partook of quite a different character. It would be 
difficult to classify all of them, but the large majority of the laws were 
nullified on the claim that they were in conflict with some provision of 
the 14th Amendment, either the ‘due process’ clause or ‘equal protection 
of the laws’ clause, or both. 

“ * * * Shall this growing political power under the name of the 

Supreme Court of the U. S. go on unchallenged and uncontrolled as the 
guardian of our American democracy, and as a substitute for ‘We the 
people,’ not only in our Federal Government but even in our state and 
municipal governments? * * * No state statute can be passed today 

without asking the question: Will the Supreme Court let it stand? 
No city ordinance can be passed today without asking the question: 
Will the Supreme Court of the U. S. let it stand? But why have states 
at all if the states shall be mere shapes and shadows; if the states shall 
not be sovereign in state and affairs; if the states must all the while antici¬ 
pate the viewpoint and judgment of the Supreme Court of the U. S., 
and finally be forced to sm^render to the court’s view and veto on public 
policies? 

“A judicial body was what was intended to be created by the Constitu¬ 
tion of the U. S.; but, instead, we have a political body passing on political 
questions, not partisan ones, great questions of public pohcy affecting 
not only national interests but state and even municipal interests, all 
the while exercising over them the right to veto, the right to supervise, 
the right to modify, the right to destroy. And when the people once 
thoroughly wake up, will they not consider the suggestion of the learned 
justice (Hughes) to ‘swiftly demand and set up a ’different system?’ 

“Says Melville D. Post, ‘Out of 77 consecutive decisions rendered by 
the Supreme Court of the U. S., 29 were given by a vote of 5 to 4 and 46 
by a vote of 6 to 3; in only 2 instances did as many as 7 out of the 9 justices 
agree.’ (Tliis was written Dec. 18, 1915). 

“In cases involving public policies, as defined by state and Federal 
statute, cases involving questions of eminent domain, taxation, police 
power, and the like, which are inherent and sovereign in the domestic 
affairs of the State and the home-rule affairs of our municipalities, 
questions that are more of a political nature than legal, why should not 
at least a three-fourths vote be required by the Supreme Court of the 
U. S. on the fact of clear conflict, before the statute or ordinance should 
be nullified? When the statute clearly permits what the Constitution 
clearly prohibits, or the statute clearly prohibits what the Constitution 
clearly permits, you then have, in such a situation that clear conflict 
where both statute and Constitution cannot stand. Of course the statute 
should yield to the fundamental law, the Constitution. But who shall 
be the judge as to such conflict? We have seen that in England, Parlia¬ 
ment alone determines this question, not the courts. In France it is 
the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, not the judges. And in every 


738 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


leading nation of the world, save the U. S., it is likewise the legislative 
body that determines whether or not there is such clear conflict; and the 
action of such legislative bodies is final. 

“The remedy is in the Constitution without amendment, in the Federal 
Judicial Article III, Section 2, in this language: 

“ ‘In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and 
Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court 
shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, 
the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and 
Fact, loith such Excerptions and binder such Regulations as the Congress 
shall make.' If now Congress should pass an act declaring that no state 
or Federal Statute should be declared null and void, as contrary to public 
policy or contrary to any state constitution or the Federal Constitution, 
unless by the concurrence of a three-fourths vote of the Supreme Court 
of the U. S., the evil would be very largely if not entirely remedied. 
* * * After the passage of such a law by Congress it will then be up 

to the people of the several states to limit their own courts, as to nullifying 
statute, by some similar Constitutional provision; but until the Federal 
courts are restrained such provision for the state courts will be of practically 
no avail.”— The Supreme Court of Ohio. Siaturday Evening Post, June 10, 
1916. 

Allen G. Thurman: “Senator Thurman is an Ajax, with a helmet 
and spear, to thunder along the line, and deal death-giving blows to the 
foe whom he meets.” 

-—Durbin Ward, in seconding the nomination of Thurman's nomina¬ 
tion for Vice-President, 1881^. 

Durbin Ward, lawyer and soldier, was born at Aughsta, Bracken Co., 
Ky., Feb. 11, 1819; moved to Lebanon, O., and studied law with Judge 
Smith, completing Ms studies with Governor Thomas Corwin, with whom 
he entered into partnersMp in 1843, which was dissolved when Ward 
became prosecuting attorney of Warren Co., 1845-51. Was a member 
of the Democratic Convention, which met in Charleston, S. C., in 1860 
and which reassembled in Baltimore and nominated S. A. Douglas 
that same year. In 1884, he presented Allen G. Thurman as a candidate 
for President of the U. S., on the D3mo3ratic ticket. Mr. Ward died at 
Lebanon, O., May 22, 1886. 


JUSTIN McCarthy on o’connell 

“O’Connell represented all the impulsiveness, the quick-changing 
emotions, the passionate, exaggerated loves and hatreds, the heedless¬ 
ness of statement, the tendency to confound impressions with facts, 
the ebullient humor—all the other qualities that are exceptionally 
characteristic of the Celt. The Irish people were the audience to which 
O’Connell habitually played. It may, indeed, be said that even in play¬ 
ing to this audience he commonly played to the gallery. As the orator 
of a popular assembly, as the orator of a monster meeting, he probably 
never had an equal in these countries. He had many of the physical 
endowments that are especially favorable to success in such a sphere. 
He had a herculean frame, a stately presence, a face capable of expressing 
easily and effectively the most rapid alterations of mood, a voice which 
all admit to have been almost unrivaled for strength and sweetness. 
Its power, its pathos, its passion, its music, have been described in words 
of positive rapture by men who detested O’Connell, and who would rather, 
if they could, have denied to him any claim on public attention, even in 
the matter of voice. He spoke without studied preparation, and of course 
had all the defects of such a style.” 

—i McCarthy's 'History of Our (Turn Times,' 213-21 f. 



EMORY WASHBURN (1800-1877), Massachusetts 


LAW PRACTICE 

“Historically, the instances are rare where an earnest, right-minded 
young man, with fair natural abilities and a reasonable share of 
industry, has failed in the end to earn a livelihood in the profession of the 
law, and with it the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens.” 

— ^Study, etc., of the Law,' 92. 

LAWYERS AND LAW 

“No civilization has ever been able to subsist without law; nor do I 
beheve the ends of society, under a free government, could be attained 
without the instrumentalities of the law, and among them a class of 
advocates.”— ‘Study, etc., of the Law,' 256. 


DESCRIPTION OF JOHN McSWEENEY 

“His manners were persuasive and captivating before he opened his 
mouth. He possessed a bold confidence that took his adversary by storm 
before a shot was fired, of wonderful resources, looking far ahead. You 
had to watch him closely, or ere you were aware he had seized his objective 
point, and put it down in ink. He used his own witnesses with a wonderful 
dexterity—terrified with the frown of apparent rage, put a favorable 
construction on a damaging theory, and a liar never escaped the keenness 
of his intellectual sword. To those who did not know him, he seemed to 
lack something of geniality and suaviter in modo, but in a company 
of friends, and in his home, his manners were tender and gentle. As a 
conversationalist, he was a fountain where the Graces might have loved 
to pause and sip. He was a master of style, free from mannerisms. 
His language was the pure Saxon. His control and modulation of his 
voice was, in some respects, the secret of his power. He understood the 
pitch and quality of tone in every shade of thought and emotion. If he 
desired to be sad or plaintive, the modulation was minor or semi-tonic; 
if inclined to irony, his voice waived upward and downward; if inclined 
to expressions of awe and sublimity, it had a level movement, from note 
to note, like the repeated sounds of a deep toned bell. Sober in pathos, 
furious in rapartee, jolly in humor, terrific in invective.” 

— The Collector, of Detroit, Mich., at time of his heath, 1890. 

SENATOR CALVIN S. BRICE ON McSWEENEY 

“I have listened to Depew, Hoadly, Ingersoll, Choate and all the 
other charming speakers; but no one of them has ever so delighted me as 
did McSweeney in every instant of his two hour’s speech at Canton last 
Thursday night.” 



A. R. WEBBER (1852- ), Ohio 

Dead Church: ‘‘Is one in which a tear has not been shed for 40 years.” 
THE INFLUENCE OF LAWYERS UPON OUR REPUBLIC 

“Our Republic, the greatest government in the world, the hope of 
humanity, conceived and brought forth but yesterday, wrought from the 
brain of lawyers, has been so interpreted and stabilized by them that 
even a great Civil War failed to wreck it. 

“The impassioned orator and lawyer, Patrick Henry, fired the colonies 
to revolt, in that immortal speech, ending with, ‘Give me liberty or give 
me death!’ Words which encircled the globe. That colossus in debpAe, 
John Adams, the lawyer, laid the foundation of the Nation, in the Brain¬ 
tree Resolutions, adopted by Massachusetts and other colonies. The 
Declaration of Independence, freeing us from the oppressions of Great 
Britain, was penned by Thomas Jefferson, the lawyer, at the age of thirty- 
three. The Federahst, by many thought to be our greatest State paper, 
was the joint work of Jay, our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, and legal adviser of Washington, Hamilton, the 
international lawyer, ‘who touched the dead corpse of the Nation’s 
credit, and it stood upon its feet,’ and Madison, the constructive states¬ 
man and master constitutional lawyer. Lastly, the Constitution, itself, 
our Magna Charta, is the work of lawyers and statesmen, rnade after¬ 
wards what it really is, the arbiter of our political destinies, as interpreted 
by the great opinions of Jay, Ellsworth, Rutledge and especially of Mar¬ 
shall, and this in its formative period. 

“The majority of both Houses of Congress, and the Legislatures of 
the several States, have been and are lawyers. Abraham Lincoln, at 
the helm, during the dark days of the Civil War, wrote the Emancipation 
Proclamation, removing the shackles from 4,000,000 bondmen, was a 
lawyer and a humanitarian, whose fame fills the world. All of our 
twenty-eight Presidents of the Nation, save four, were lawyers. 

“An old minister used to visit my law office and preach. I asked him 
why he did not call on other business men with his message. He pro¬ 
phetically replied: ‘I am directed by the Almighty to go forth and preach 
the Gospel to the rulers of the Nation; the lawyers are the rulers; always 
have been; always will be. By their fruits ye shall know them!’ He 
spoke wiser than he knew. 

“Tested by this inexorable law, what greater tribute can be paid to 
the legal profession than giving to the world the first real government 
ever instituted among men, wffich stands absolutely, in its principles, 
for pure democracy?” 

“These facts should never be overlooked or forgotten by any attorney 
worthy of the name. If lawyers were the founders of the nation, why 
should they not be preservers thereof. If it is wrecked, then as leaders 
by failing to do their duty, will be the authors of its ruin.” 

—From a letter to the Compiler, Dec., 1921, by A. R. Webber, Fx~ 
Judge of Covrt of Common Fleas, and Ex-Congressman of the 
United States. 

LIVES OP MEN WORTH WHILE 

“The orator is now digging up the lives of John Brown, Philhps and 
Garrison as subjects for his inspiration in swaying his audiences to a 
better thought and higher plane. Two of them lived in poverty, and all 
their names were for forty years a hissing and a by-word. Lovejoy 
was at twenty-seven shot down like a dog in the streets of Alton, III., for 
publishing a little paper denouncing slavery, and that by the respectable 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


741 


of the town. Tliis generation has erected to his memory the tallest 
monument in Illinois. Three of his little hand-presses were broken in pieces 
and given to the great maw of the Mississippi river. John Brown was 
hanged for the same truth, since you and I come upon the map, for it 
was in the fall of 1859 his feet lost their hold upon the scaffold. Since 
that time eight persons have at different times ‘taken their pen in hand’ 
and written his biography. Broken legs are just as they were in Abraham’s 
time, but the means of locomotion have changed from the ox to lightning 
speed over land and water and through the air. From the sickle to the 
reaper with its steel fingers is a marvelous leap, but still more wondrous 
is the fact, when we consider that from Adam till you and I appeared, 
the sickle did it all. The point in the Darius Green flying-machine poem 
was the impossible, and hence the conceiver of such a machine is pictured 
by the author as a simpleton. The kite in the air is a flying machine, 
propelled through the unseen buoy by the string, in place of the motor. 
When you were in Oberlin College, electricity was a plaything, and the 
apparatus of the professor a toy. Put wings on the gasoline motor-boat 
and you have a flying-machine. Between the motor-boat and the flying- 
machine is the difference between the fish and the bird, so far as loco¬ 
motion is concerned.” 

—From a letter to the Author of this work, Aug. 26, 1911. 

THE PEOPLE TO WHOM WE OWE WHAT WE HAVE 

“Such characters as the men who founded Oberlin College, and similar 
institutions of learning, laid the foundations on the true principles of 
democracy, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, have always 
appealed to me as real and true, the people to whom we owe what we 
have. Webster and that type of men in their hearts believed one thing, 
when it came to slavery and temperance questions, and talked and lived 
contrary thereto. They were willing to sell out their real manhood for 
political positions; and the result was that they hat^e gone down in history, 
great as they were, stained by their deceptions. The only thing that 
has saved them from utter oblivion is the fact that they stood by the 
Union. 

“Webster, in his 4th of March speech in 1850, turned his back to the 
North and his face to the South, and endorsed the Fugitive Slave Law, 
bidding for the Southern vote; he received for so doing just what he 
deserved, failure to secure the Presidency; and Clay, while he contended 
that slavery was wrong, continued to hold his feUow-men in bondage to 
his dying hour. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap.’ Whether 
he be great or small, known or unknown, the men who really and truly 
live in the hearts of their countrymen in the final analysis are such men 
ah Garrison, Phillips, the Tappens, John Brown and Carrie Nation, 
Charles Finney, and others of that type. 

“They fought without salaries, and without money reward, or the 
hope thereof. No man on a salary can be truly and really a reformer. 
If he is a real reformer, he is such on his own motion, and at his own 
expense. You may not agree with me in all these things, but such is 
my settled conviction, after a thorough study of that class, and the results 
obtained. Oberlin College was planted on the platform of co-education, 
and paid no attention and made no distinction as to color, race or previous 
condition of servitude, and was against the American saloon. For a 
long term of years she was a hissing and a by-word because of this. 
Not only by the masses but by the so-called statesmen at Washington, 
from the President down, and by all the Colleges in America; even by 
the pulpits, almost universally. She has lived to see the day when they 
all sit at her feet, confessing she was right. So, I say, ‘Nothing is ever 
settled until it is settled right.’ 

—From an address on ‘'The Founding of Oberlin College, 1920. 


DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852), Massachusetts 


THE LAW 

“I love our common profession, and love all who honor it. I regard 
it as the great ornament, and one of the chief defenses and securities, 
of our institutions. It is indispeusable to and conservative of public 
liberty. I honor it from the bottom of my heart. If I am anything 
it is the law, that notable profession, that sublime science which we all 
pursue, that has made me what I am. It has been my ambition, coeval 
with my early manhood, nay, with my youth, to be thought worthy to 
be ranked under the banner of that profession. The law has been my 
chief stimulus, my controlling and abiding hope, nay, I might almost say, 
my presiding genius and guardian angel. * * * Although it may 

not always, although it does not often in this country, lead to wealth, 
it does what is infinitely better and more important, it enables us to do 
good in our own day and generation. I repeat, it is not calculated to 
yield its members the greatest fortunes. It seldom, in this respect, 
fuMls the sanguine expectations of beginners in the toilsome path. 
After twenty-five years’ observation, I can give it as the condensed history 
of most, if not all, good lawyers, that they lived well and died poor.” 
—Daniel Webster, Address to the Charleston, S. C., Bar, May 12, 1847. 

THE WIFE 

“May it please your Honors, there is nothing upon the earth that can 
compare with the attachment of a wife; no creature who for the object 
of her love is so indomitable, so persevering, so ready to suffer and to die. 
Under the most depressing circumstances, woman’s weakness becomes 
fearless ’ courage; all her shrinking and sinking passes away, and her 
spirit acquires the firmness of marble, adamantine firmness, when circum¬ 
stances drive her to put forth all her affection.” 

—Daniel Webster, in the Goodyear Rubber case, in speaking of the 
hardships Mrs. Goodyear endured, during years of privation, lohile 
he uas perfecting his patents. 


THE HUMAN HAND 

“His (man’s) port is erect, his face toward Heaven, and he is furnished 
with limbs which are not absolutely necessary to his support or locomotion 
and which are at once powerful, fiexible, capable of innumerable modes 
and varieties of motion and terminated by an instrument of wonderful, 
heavenly workmanship, the human hand. This marvelous physical 
conformation gives man the power of acting with ^eat effect upon 
external objects, in pursuance of the suggestions of his understanding, 
and of applying the results of his reasoning power to his own purposes. 
Without this particular formation, he would not be a man, with what¬ 
ever sagacity he might have been endowed. * * * power of a 

man’s arm is an early lesson among the studies of primitive man. This 
is animal strength; and from this he rises to the conception of employing, 
for his own use, the strength of other animals. A stone, impelled by the 
power of his arm, he finds will produce a greater effect than the arm 
itself; this is a species of mechanical power. The effect results from a 
combination of the moving force with the gravity of a heavy body. 
The limb of a tree is a rude but powerful instrument; it is a lever. And 
the mechanical power being all discovered, like other natural qualities. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


743 


by induction (I use the word as Bacon used it) or experience, and not by 
any reasoning a priori, their progress has kept pace with the general 
civilization and education of nations.” 

—Daniel Webster, from lecture before Boston Mechanic's Institute, 

Nov. 12, 1828. 

MOTION 

“Motion or change, of place, regular or occasional, belongs to all or 
most of the things which are around us. Animal life everywhere moves; 
the earth itself has its motion, and its complexities of motion; the ocean 
heaves and subsides; rivers run, lingering or rushing, to the sea and the 
air which'we breathe moves and acts with mighty power. Motion thus 
pertaining to the physical objects which surround us is the exhaustless 
fountain whence philosophy draws the means by which, in various degrees 
and endless forms, natural agencies and the tendencies of inert matter 
are brought so the succor and assistance of human strength. It is the 
object of mechanical contrivance to modify motion, to produce it in new 
forms, to direct it to new purposes; to multiply its uses, by its means to 
do better that which human strength could do without its aid, and to 
perform that, also, which such strength, unassisted by art could not 
perform. Motion isself is but the result of force; or, in other words, 
force is defined to be whatever tends to produce motion. The operation 
of forces, therefore, on bodies, is the broad field which is open for that 
philosophical examination, the results of which it is the business of 
mechanical contrivance to apply. The leading forces or sources of motion 
are, as is well known, the power of animals, gravity, heat, the winds and 
water. There are various others of less power, of more difficult applica¬ 
tion. Mechanical philosophy, therefore, may be said to be that science 
which instructs in the knowledge of natural moving powers, animate or 
inanimate; in the manner of modifying those powers, and of increasing 
the intensity of some of them by artificial means, such as heat and electric¬ 
ity; and in applying the varieties of force and motion, thus derived from 
natural agencies, to the arts of life. This is the object of mechanical 
philosophy,”— Daniel Webster, Boston Mechanics'' Institute, Nov. 12, 1828. 

ELOQUENCE 

“When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, 
when great interests are at stake, and strong passions are excited, nothing 
is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual 
and moral endowments. Clearness, force and earnestness does not 
consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning 
may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be 
marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in 
the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense 
expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it: they cannot 
reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreak of a fountain from 
the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, 
original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly 
ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock, and disgust men, 
when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children and their 
country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their 
power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even 
genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of high 
qualities. The patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. 
The clear conception, out-running the deductions of logic, the higher 
purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue 
beaming from the eye, informing every feature and urging the whole man 


744 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


onward, right onward to his object, this, tliis is eloquence, or rather it 
is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble,- 
sublime, god-like action.” 

—Daniel Webster, on Adams and Jefferson, Boston, Aug. 2, 1826. 
MAN’S INFLUENCE AFTER DEATH 

“But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their 
country they yet live, and live forever. The life in all that perpetuates 
the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own 
great actions in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep engraved 
lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. 
They live in their example; and they hve, emphatically, and will live in 
the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions 
now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only 
in their own country, but throughout the civilized world. A superior and 
commanding human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouch¬ 
safes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, 
and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent 
heat, as weU as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass 
of human mind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and Anally 
goes out in death, no hght follows, but it leaves the world all light, all 
on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died, but the 
human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to 
a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after 
truth, has kept on its course successively and gloriously. Newton died; 
yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on by 
the laws which he discovered, and in the orbits which he saw, and de¬ 
scribed for them, in the infinity of space.” 

—Daniel Webster, Adams and Jefferson," in Faneuil Hall, Boston, 
Aug. 2, '28. 

ANCIENTS—MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY 

“The Greeks were a people whose genius seems to have been equally 
fitted for the investigations of science and the works of imagination. 
The immortal Euclid, centuries before our era, composed his Elements 
of Geometry; a work which, for 2000 years, has been, and still continues 
to be, a text-book for instruction in that science. A history of mechanical 
philosophy, however, would not begin with Greece. There is a wonder 
beyond Greece. Higher up in the annals of mankind, nearer, far nearer, 
to the origin of our races, out of all reach of letters, beyond the sources 
of tradition, beyond all history, except what remains in the monuments 
of her own art, stands Egypt, the mother of nations! Egypt! Thebes! 
The Labyrinth! The Pyramids! Who shall explain the mysteries which 
these names suggest? The Pyramids! Who can inform us whether it 
was by mere numbers, and patience, and labor, aided perhaps by the 
simple lever, or if not, by what forgotten combination of powers, by what 
unknown machines, mass was thus aggregated to mass, and quarry piled 
on quarry, till solid granite seemed to cover the earth and reach the skies?” 
—Daniel Webster, Lecture before the Boston Mechanics' Institute, 
Nov. 12, '28. 

THE JUDICIARY 

“The judicial power comes home to every man. If the legislature 
passes incorrect or unjust general laws, its members bear the evil as well 
as others. But judicature acts on individuals. It touches every private 
right, every private interest, and almost every private feeling. What 
we possess is hardly fit to be called our own, unless we feel secure in its 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


745 


possession; and this security, this feehng of perfect safety, cannot exist 
under a wicked, or even a weak and ignorant administration of the laws. 
There is no happiness, there is no liberty, there is no enjoyment of life, 
unless a man can say when he rises in the morning, I shall be subject to 
the decision of no unjust judge today.” 

—Daniel Webster, at a Public Dinner, in N. Y. City, Mar. 10, '31. 

AGRICULTURE 

“Agriculture feeds us; to a great degree it clothes us; without it we 
could not have manufacturers, and we should not have commerce. 
These all stand together, but they stand together like pillars in a cluster, 
the largest in the center, and the largest is agriculture. Let us remember, 
too, that we live in a country of small farms and freehold tenements; 
a country in which men cultivate with their own hands their own fee- 
simple acres, drawing not only their subsistence, but also their spirit 
of independence and manly freedom from the ground they plough. 
They are at once its owners, its cultivators, and its defenders. And, 
whatever else may be undervalued or overlooked, let us never forget that 
the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Man 
may be civilized, in some de^ee, without great progress in manufactures 
and with little commerce with his distant neighbors. But without the 
cultivation of the earth, he is, in all countries, a savage. Until he gives 
up the chase, and fixes himself in some place and seeks a living from the 
earth, he is a roaming barbarian. When tillage begins, other arts follow. 
The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.” 

—Daniel Webster, The Agriculture of England,” before legislature 
of Mass., Jan. 13, ISJi-O. 

A MOTHER’S INFLUENCE 

“Bonaparte once asked Madame de Stael in what manner he could 
best promote the happiness of France. Her reply was full of political 
wisdom. She said, ‘Instruct the mothers of the ITench people.’ Mothers 
are, indeed, the affectionate and effective teachers of the human race. 
The mother begins her process of training with the infant in her arms. 
It is she who directs, so to speak, its first mental and spiritual pulsations. 
She conducts it along the impressionable years of childhood and youth, and 
hopes to deliver it to the stern conflicts and tumultuous scenes of life, 
armed by those good principles which her child has received from maternal 
care and love. If we draw within the circle of our contemplation the 
mothers of a civilized nation, what do we see? We behold so many 
artificers working, not on frail and perishable matter, but on the immortal 
mind, moulding and fashioning beings who are to exist forever. We 
applaud the artist whose sMU and genius present the mimic man upon 
the canvass; we admire and celebrate the sculptor who works out the same 
image in enduring marble; but how insignificant are these achievements 
of art in comparison with the great vocation of human mothers! They 
work, not upon the canvass that shall perish, or the marble that shall 
crumble into dust, but upon mind, upon spirit, which is to last forever, 
and which is to bear, for good or evil, throughout its duration, the impress 
of a mother’s plastic hand.” 

—Daniel Webster, to the Ladies of Richmond, Va., Oct. 5, ISJ^O. 

JUSTICE 

“Justice is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which 
holds civilized beings and civilized nations together, wherever her temple 
stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social 
security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our 


746 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


race. And whoever labors on this edifice with usefulness and distinction, 
whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its pillars, adorns its entabla¬ 
tures, or contributes to raise its august dome still higher in the skies, 
connects himself, in name and fame, and character, with that which is 
and must be as durable as the frame of human society.” 

—Daniel Webster, Remarks upon the death of Mr. Justice Story, 
before Suffolk Bar, Boston, Sept. 12, 18^.5. 

READING 

“So much as I read, I made my own. When a half hour, or an hour, 
at most, had elapsed, I closed my book and thought over what I had 
read. If there was anything peculiarly interesting or striking in the 
passage, I endeavored to recall it and lay it up in my memory, and 
commonly could effect my object. Then, if in debate or conversation 
afterwards, any subject came up on which I had read something, I could 
talk very easily, as far as I had read, and then I was careful to stop. 
Thus greater credit was given me for extensive and accurate knowledge 
than I really possessed.” 

—Daniel Webster, from letter to John W. McGraw, 1802. 

r 

REQUISITES OF A LAWYER 

“Accuracy and diligence are much more necessary to a lawyer than 
great comprehension of mind, or brilliancy of talent. His business is to 
refine, define, to look into authorities, and compare cases and split hairs. 
A man can never gallop over the fields of law on Pegasus, nor fly across 
them on the wing of oratory. If he would stand on terra firma he must 
descend; if he would be a great lawyer, he must first consent to be only 
a great drudge.”— Daniel Webster, from letters to Dr. Merrill, 1803. 

BYRON 

“Byron’s case shows that fact sometimes runs by all fancy, as a steam 
boat passes a scow at anchor. I have tried to find something in him to 
like besides his genius and his wit, but there was no other likeable quality 
about him. He was an incarnation of demonism. He is the only man, 
in Enghsh history, for a hundred years, who has boasted of inlftdelity, 
and of every practical vice, not included in what may be termed (what 
his biographer, Tom Moore,, does term) meanness. Lord Bolingbroke, 
in his most extravagant, youthful sallies, and the wicked Lord Littleton 
were saints to him. All Moore can say is, each of his vices had some 
virtues or some prudence near it, which in some sort, checked it, well, 
if that were not so, who would escape hanging? The biographer, indeed, 
says his worst conduct must not be judged by the ordinary standard! 
And that is true, if a favorable decision is looked for. Many excellent 
reasons are given for his being a bad husband, the sum of which is that 
he was a very bad man. I confess, I was rejoiced then, I am rejoiced 
now, that he was driven out of England by public scorn; for his vices 
were not in his passions, but his principles. He decried all religion and all 
virtue from the housetop. Dr. Johnson says there is merit in maintaining 
good principles, though the preacher is seduced into violation of them. 
This is true. Good theory is something. But a theory of living, and of 
dying, too, made up of the elements of hatred to religion, contempt of 
morals and defiance of the opinion of all the decent part of the public, 
when, before, has a man of letters avowed it!” 

—Daniel Webster, in letter to Geo. T. Curtis, dated Washington, D. C., 
Apr. 8, '30. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


747 


THE BOOK OF JOB 

“Th6 Book of Job, taken as a mere work of literary genius, is one of 
the most wonderful productions of any age or of any language. As an 
epic poem it is far superior to either the Iliad or the Odyssey. The last 
two receive much of their attraction from the mere narrative of warlike 
deeds, and from the perilous escapes of the chief personage from death 
and slaughter; but the Book of Job is a purely intellectual narrative. 
Its power is shown in the dialogues of the characters introduced. The 
story is simple in its construction, and there is little in it to excite the 
imagination or arouse the sympathy. It is purely an intellectual pro¬ 
duction, and depends upon the powers of the dialogue, and not upon the 
interest of the story, to produce the effects. This is considering it merely 
as an intellectual work. I read it through very often, and always with 
renewed delight. In my judgment, it is the greatest epic ever written.” 

—Daniel Webster, from Chas. Lenman's '^Private Life of Webster,'’ 

p. 102. 

THE GLORIES OF THE MORNING 

“The morning itself, few inhabitants of cities know anything about. 
Among all our good people, not one in a thousand sees the sun rise once 
in a year. They know nothing of the morning. Their idea of it is that 
it is that part of the day which comes along after a cup of coffee and a 
piece of toast. With them, morning is not a new issuing of light, a new 
bursting forth of the sun, a new waking-up of all that has life from a 
sort of temporary death, to behold the works of God, the heavens and the 
earth; it is only a part of the domestic day, belonging to reading news¬ 
papers, answering notes, sending the children to school, and giving 
orders for dinner. The first streaks of light, the earliest purpling of the 
east, which the lark springs up to greet and the deeper and deeper coloring 
into orange and red, till at length the ‘glorious sun is seen, regent of the 
day,’ this they never enjoy, for they never see it. I never thought that 
Adam had much the advantage of us from having seen the world while 
it was new. The manifestations of the power of God, like His mercies, 
are ‘new every morning’ and fresh every moment. We see as fine risings 
of the sun as ever Adam saw; and its risings are as much a miracle now as 
they were in his day, and, I think, a good deal more, because it is now 
a part of the miracle, that for thousands and thousands of years he has 
come to his appointed time, without the variation of a millionth part of 
a second. I know the morning, I am acquainted with it, and I love it. 
I love it fresh and sweet as it is, a daily new creation, breaking forth 
and calling all that have life and breath and being to a new adoration, 
new enjoyments, and new gratitude.” 

— Daniel Webster, From a letter written at 5 A. M., Richmond, Va.. 

Apr. 29, ’Jf.7, to Mrs. J. W. Paige, of Boston, Mass. 

WOULD NOT DRAG ANGELS DOWN 

“Sir, I thank God that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which 
is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, 
of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be 
found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public 
merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my 
my own state, or neighborhood; when I refuse for any such cause the 
homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devo¬ 
tion to liberty and the country; or if I see an uncommon endowment of 
Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the south, 
and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by state jealousy, I get 
up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, 
may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. * * * 


748 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


“Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. 
There is her history, the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is 
secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker 
Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen 
in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil 
of every state from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie for¬ 
ever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its 
youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength 
of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion 
shall wound it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and 
necessary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by which 
alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of 
that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm 
with whatever vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather around 
it, if faU it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its glory, and on the 
very spot of its origin.”— From Webster's Reply to Hayne, Jan. 26, 1830. 

WEBSTER FORESAW DISUNION 

“When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in 
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored frag¬ 
ments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belliger¬ 
ent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal 
blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the 
gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the 
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their 
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, 
bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as. What is all this 
icorth; nor those other words of delusion and folly. Liberty first and Union 
afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, 
blazing on all its ample'folds as they fioat over the sea and over the 
land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, 
dear to every true American heart—Liberty and Union, now and forever, 
one and inseparable!” 

— Peroration — Webster's Reply to Hayne, in U. S. Senate, Jan. 26, 

1830. 

PUBLIC SENTIMENT 

“There is something among men more capable of shaking despotic 
power than lightning, whirlwind or earthquake, that is the threatened 
indignation of the whole civilized world.” 

—Daniel Webster, at “Festival of the Sons of N. H.," Boston, Nov. 

7, 'Jk9. 

WEBSTER’S GREAT LAW CASES 

That the reader may see that Webster was not only a great national 
lawyer, but an international one as well, it will be well to give here a 
synopsis of some of his great cases, nine of which we will epitomize: 

The Dartmouth College ease (tried in 1818, in which he considered his 
argument one of his greatest), he contended that the charter given the 
college was a contract, which could not be modified subsequently without 
the consent of the corporation, unless power to do so were expressly 
conferred in the charter. The U. S. Supreme Court, in 1819 (Dart¬ 
mouth College V. Woodward, 4 Wheat., 518), so held. Webster and 
Hopkinson appeared for the College, and Wirt and Holmes, and later 
Pinkney for Woodward, Sec. and Treas. of the new corporation. 

McCulloch V. Maryland, 4 Wheat., 316, the same year, involved 
questions between the State of Maryland and the U. S. Government. 
The Courts decided (Marshall writing the opinion) that altho the power 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


749 


to establish a national bank was not expressly granted to Congress by the 
Constitution, yet, as Congress had express powers to raise money to 
carry on the government, borrow money, and disburse its revenues, 
it had the implied power to employ all necessary means of effecting 
these objects, and the bank in question was an instrumentality which was 
convenient and even necessary for such purposes. The Maryland branch 
bank, at Baltiinore, by authority of the Legislature, imposed a stamp 
duty on the circulating note'fe of all banks, or branches in the State, not 
chartered by the State. The Court, therefore, declared the statute uncon¬ 
stitutional and void. This decision has stood for nearly 100 years, as 
judicial authority for the federal banking system. Pinkney, Wirt and 
Webster appeared for McCuUoch, he being the cashier of the federal branch 
bank; and Luther Martin, Jos. HopMnson, and Wm. Jones for the State. 

Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 259 and 639-47, (1824) was the Fulton 
Steamboat case. The legislature of N. Y. attempted to give Fulton and 
Livingston a monopoly on steamboat navigation on the Hudson River. 
Ogden, the defendant, being their assignee, brought an injunction re¬ 
straining Gibbons from plying his boats upon the privileged waters. 
Chancellor Kent, in the State Court, sustained the contention, which 
was affirmed in the N. Y. Court of Appeals. Upon appeal to the U. S. 
Supreme Court, that Court held with Webster and Wirt, who appeared 
for Gibbons, that Congress having enacted statutes authorizing vessels 
to navigate all waters within the jurisdiction of the U. S., the State 
law was unconstitutional and void. Mr. Webster was suddenly called 
into the case, and prepared himself in a single night of intense labor. 
He regarded this and the Dartmouth College case his greatest cases. 
He had Thomas Addis Emmett and Oakley to contend with, as they 
were attorneys for Ogden. 

Ogden V. Saunders, 12 Wheat., 213 (1827), came up upon a question 
arising in the Circuit Court of Louisiana, upon an action in assumpsit, 
brought by Saunders of Kentucky, against Ogden of Louisiana, and 
involved the question whether a contract made after the passage of a State 
law, undertaking to discharge on a surrender of their property for distri¬ 
bution among their creditors, is not equally within the prohibition of the 
Federal Constitution, whether the clause prohibiting State laws impair¬ 
ing the obligation of contracts covered future, as well as past, contracts. 
The Court decided, contrary to Webster’s position, that an insolvent law 
of a State does not impair the obligation of a future contract between its 
own citizens. Marshall, Story and Duvall, however, dissented. Clay, 
Ogden and Haines appeared for Ogden in U. S. Circuit, and D. B. Ogden, 
Wm. Jones and Mr. Sampson for Ogden in Supreme Court, and Webster 
and Wheaton for Saunders, and established the long accepted doctrine 
that only Congress can pass a Bankrupt Act. 

U. S. Bank v. Primrose, 13 Peters, 579 (1839), came up on appeal from 
the Circuit Court of Alabama, where the judgment was for defendant. 

The Supreme Court held that the law of Comity prevails between the 
States as between independent nations, and entitles the corporations of 
one sovereignty to make contracts in another, and sue in the courts. 
Sergeant and Webster for plaintiffs in error. The higher cour.t reversed 
the decision of the lower court. 

The Girard Will Case (Videl et al. v. Girard’s Executors) 2 Howard, 
127 (1844), came up on appeal from the decree in equity rendered in the 
Circuit Court of Pennsylvania, to try the question of the validity of 
Girard’s will. The question was whether the bequest to found a college 
could be construed to be a charitable devise. Girard was a free thinker, 
and provided in his will that no priest or minister of any denomination 
should be admitted to his college. Webster, assuming that this excluded 
all rehgious teaching, laid, down the proposition that no bequest or gift 
could be charitable which excluded Christian charity. Webster and Wm. 
Jones represented the complainants and appellants, the heirs; Horace 
Binney and Sergeant for the respondents, or executors, for the validity 


750 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


of the will. (Mr. Binney, by the way, is said to have studied the question 
of “Charitable Uses,” a year in Europe in preparation to try this ease.) 
The Court, by Judge Story, against Webster, held: 

1. That the will was not void for uncertainty. 

2. That it was not void as a charity, because the testator did not 
intend to exclude the teaching of Christianity, though he excluded its 
being taught by its ministers, or other sectarian persons. 

3. That whether void as a charity, where testator prohibited all teach¬ 
ing of the Christian religion by anybody, the Court expressed no opinion. 

Luther v. Borden, 7 Howard, 1 (1848) frequently called “The Rhode 
Island Case,” grew out of the troubles, known as “Dorr’s Rebellion,” 
and involved the constitutional provisions for suppressing insurrections 
and securing to every State a republican form of government, and also 
the general history and theory of the American governments. State and 
National. The declaration was in trespass. The writ issued in 1842, in 
which Luther Martin complains that Luther M. Borden and others 
broke into his house, in Warren, R. I., June 29, 1842, and disturbed his 
family and committed other illegal acts. The plea is jurisdiction under 
the law of R. I. The cases came up on a writ of error from the Circuit 
Court (in which Mr. Justice Story had presided and found for the defend¬ 
ants): the second case came up by a certificate of division of opinion. 
The allegations, evidence and arguments were the same in each. . Mr. 
Hallett and Mr. Nathan Chfford (Attorney-General of the U. S.) for plain¬ 
tiff in error. Webster and Whipple defendants in error. The U. S. Supreme 
Court held that it was bound by the President’s decision as to which of 
the rival organizations was the lawful State government of R. I., and 
dechned to take jurisdiction of what was purely a political question, 
lying beyond the jurisdictional authority. Mr. Webster pointedly 
said, “How can a Court invite the present Governor and the rebel, Thos. 
W. Dorr, to exchange places?” 

The White Murder Case, tried in the State court, at Salem, Massachu¬ 
setts, in July and August, 1830, involved the trial for murder of Francis 
and Jos. J. Knapp and George and Richard Crowninshield for the murder 
of Capt. Jos. White, an old man of 82 years, at Salem. Webster appeared 
in aid of the prosecution; Franklin Dexter and W. H. Gardiner for the 
defense. It was an extraordinary case, Francis Knapp was convicted, as 
principal, and sentenced to death. Jos. J. Knapp, tried three months later, 
charged with being an accessory before the fact, was convicted and 
sentenced to be hanged; Geo. Crowninshield proved an alibi, and was 
acquitted his brother, Richard Crowninshield, committed suicide by 
hanging himself to the bars of his cell with a handkerchief. 

This is the case in which Webster’s argument finds place in the old 
readers, “Murder will out,” in which he so vividly pictures the tortures 
of a guilty conscience. 

(Of the introduction, H. C. Lodge, says: “I have studied this famous 
exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently, in the works 
of all the great modern orators, and some of the ancient as well, for similar 
passages of higher merit. My quest has been in vain”). 

The Goodyear Rubber Case, tried in 1852, the last year of Mr, Webster’s 
life, when he was 70, was an injunction and accounting sought by Chas. 
Goodyear, the patentee and inventor of vulcanized India rubber, against 
Horace H. Day. It was tried in a court of equity, at Trenton, N. J., 
involved a multitude of facts and the intricacies of patent law. Webster, 
Jas. T. Brady and Edward L. Dickinson for Goodyear, had as opponents, 
Rufus Choate and Francis B. Cutting. Mr. Justice Grier of the U. S. 
Supreme Court, and Hon. Philemon Dickerson of the. U. S. District 
Court for N. J. heard the case. The rights of Goodyear were established, 
and the case remains one of the most remarkable of Webster’s forensic 
efforts. He received a retainer of $15,000 in the case. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


751 


Says Choate, “Who, anywhere, has won, as Webster had, the double 
fame, and won the double wreath of Murray and Chatham, of Dunning, 
and Fox, of Erskine and Pitt, of William Pinkney and Rufus King, in one 
blended and transcendent superiority?” 

“I am quite sure that there is not, in the general judgment of the pro¬ 
fession, nor in the conforming opinion of his countrymen, any lawyer 
that, in the magnitude of his causes, in the greatness of their public 
character, in the immensity of their influence upon the fortunes of the 
country, or the authority which his manner of forensic eloquence in courts 
and over courts, can be placed in the same rank with Webster.” 

— Wm. Evarts, at the unveiling of Webster’s statve, at Central Park, 
N. Y., Nov. 25, 1876. 

Jeremiah Smith, of New Hampshire, who was associated with him for 
years as lawyer and judge, gave it as his opinion: 

“That in the union of high intellectual qualities, I have known no man 
whom I think his equal.” 

Hugh McCulloch, who was familiar with Webster’s methods in the 
courts wrote: 

“No man of his years ever excelled Mr. Webster as a lawyer until he 
entered public life.” 

Sir Charles Russell, afterwards Lord Killowen, said: 

“Daniel Webster’s arguments were granite-like, and he was, perhaps, 
the greatest flgure the world has seen.”— Article, ‘ The Bar as a Profession.’ 

TOLERATION 

“The principle of toleration, to which the world has come so slowly, 
is at once the most just and the most wise of all principles. Even when 
religious feeling takes a character of extravagance and enthusiasm and 
seems to threaten the order of society and shake the columns of the Social 
ediflce, its principal danger is in its restraint. If it be allowed indulgence 
and expansion like the elemental fires, it only agitates, and perhaps 
purifies, the atmosphere; while its efforts to throw off restraint would 
burst the world asunder.” 

—Daniel Webster, from ^First Settlement of New England,’ Dec. 22, 
1920. 

AFFECTIONATE SEPULTURE 

“We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, though it be a 
wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. 

“When the heart has laid down what it loved most, there it is desirous 
of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monuments, 
no honorable inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away 
the darkness of the tomb, can soften our feelings of the reality of death, 
and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us hke the con¬ 
sciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our affec¬ 
tions.” — Webster’s ^First Settlement of New England.’ 

GOVERNMENT RESTS UPON THE HOLDING AND DISTRIBUT¬ 
ING OF PROPERTY 

“In the absence of military power, the nature of government must 
essentially depend on the manner in which property is holden and dis¬ 
tributed. There is a natural influence belonging to property, whether 
it exists in many hands or few, and it is on the rights of property that 


752 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


both despotism and unrestrained popular violence ordinarily commence 
their attacks. * * * ^ republican form of government rests more on 

political constitutions, than on those laws which regulate the descent 
and transmission of property. Governments like ours could not have 
been maintained, where property was holden according to the principles 
of the feudal system; nor, on the other hand, could the feudal constitution 
possibly exist mtli us.” — Webster on the ^First Settlement of New England.' 

THE MAYFLOWER 

“The Mayflower sought our shores under no high-wrought spirit of 
commercial adventure, no love of gold, no mixture of purpose, warlike 
or hostile to any human being. Like the dove from the ark, she had 
put forth only to find rest. Solemn supphcations on the shore of the sea, 
in Holland, had invoked for her, at her departure, the blessing of Provi¬ 
dence. The stars which guarded her were the unobscured constellations 
of civil and religious liberty. Her deck was the altar of the living God. 
Fervent prayers on bended knees, mingled, morning and evening, with 
the voices of ocean, and the sighing of the winds in her shrouds. Every 
prosperous breeze, which, gently swelling her sails, helped the Pilgrims 
onward in their course, awoke new anthems of praise; and when the ele¬ 
ments were wrought into fury, neither the tempest, tossing their fragile 
bark like a feather, nor the darkness and howling of the midnight storm, 
ever disturbed, in man or woman, the firm and settled purpose of their 
souls, to undergo all, and to do all, that the meekest patience, the boldest 
resolution, and the highest trust in God could enable human beings to 
suffer or to perform.” 

— Webster's Speech on ^ The Completion of the Bunker Hill Monu¬ 
ment,' June 17, ISJfS. 

THE BIBLE 

“The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of 
morals, and a book of rehgion, of especial revelation from God; but it 
is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibilities, 
his own dignity, and his equality with his fellowman.” 

— Webster—Speech on ^Completion of Bunker Hill Monument,' June, 
183 ^. 

WASHINGTON 

“America has furnished to the world the character of Washington! 
And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone 
would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. * * * j would 

cheerfully put the question today to the intelligence of Europe and the 
world, what character of the century, upon the whole, stands out in the 
rehef of history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime; and I doubt 
not, that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be 
Washington.” 

— Webster's Speech, ^Completion of Bunker Hill Monument,' 181f.3. 
HUMBLE BIRTH 

“It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; but my elder 
brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised amid the snow¬ 
drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that, when the smoke 
first rose from its rude chimney, and curled over the frozen hills, there 
was no similar evidence of a white man’s habitation between it and the 
settlements of the rivers of Canada.” 

— Webster's speech at Saratoga, N. Y., Aug. ,19, 181^0, in Wm. 
Henry Harrison Campaign. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


753 


LIBERTY 

“Liberty is the creature of law, essentially different from that authorized 
licentiousness that trespasses on right. It is a legal and refined idea, 
the offspring of high civilization, which the savage never understood and 
never ^ can understand. Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome 
restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more 
liberty we have. It is an error to suppose that liberty consists in a 
paucity of laws. If one wants few laws, let him go to Turkey. The Turk 
enjoys that blessing. The man is free who is protected from injury.” 

— Webster on ^ The Judiciary,^ at a dinner of the Charleston, S. C.. 

Bar, May 12, 184-7. 


INFLUENCES OF COLLEGES 


“Sir, you may destroy this little institution (Dartmouth College); 
it is weak; it is in your hands. I know it is one of the lesser lights in the 
literary horizon of our country. You may put it out, but if you do, you 
must carry through your work. You must extinguish, one after another, 
all those great lights of science which for more than a century have 
thrown their radiance over our land. It is, sir, as I have said, a small 
college, and yet there are those who love it.” (“ ‘Here,’ says Prof. Goodrich, 
‘the feeling he had this far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. 
His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes filled 
with tears; his voice choked and he seemed struggling to the utmost 
to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly 
burst of feeling. * * * The whole seemed mingled throughout with 

the recollection of father, mother, brother, and all the privations and 
trials through which he had made his way into life. Everyone saw that 
it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought 
relief in words and tears.”) * * * “Sir, I know nOt how others may 

feel,” Webster proceeded, glancing at the opponents of the college before 
him, “but for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded like Caesar 
in the Senate-house by those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would 
not for this right hand have her turn to me, and say, ^ Et tu quoque, mi 
fili.’ (And thou, too, my son?)” 

— Webster’s close in the Dartmouth College case, before U. S. Supreme 

Court, Washington, D. C., 1818. 


RELIGION 


“Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal 
worth. These remain. Whatever of excellence is wrought into the soul 
itself belongs to both worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely 
to this life; it points to another world. Political or professional reputation 
cannot last forever but a conscience void of offense before God and man is 
an inheritance of eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessity and an 
indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living 
without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and 
holds him to his throne. If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats 
away, a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attractions all ^one, 
its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation 
and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scrip¬ 
tures describe, in such terse but terrific language, as living ‘without God 
in the World.’ Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle 
of all his happiness, and away, far, far away, from the purposes of his 


creation.” 

— Webster’s remarks on the 


death of Jeremiah Mason, before Supreme 


Court of Mass., at Boston, Nov. Ilf., 184-8. 


754 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


LEGAL VALUE OF MONEY 

“In truth, nothing is so baneful, so utterly ruinous to all true industry, 
as interference with the legal value of money, or attempting to raise 
artificial standards to supply its place. Shch remedies suit well the spirit 
of extravagant speculation, but they sap the very foundation of all honest 
acquisition. By weakening the security of property, they take away all 
motive for exertion. Their effect is to transfer property. Whenever a 
debt is allowed to be paid by anything less valuable than the legal currency 
in respect to which it was contracted, the difference between the value of 
the paper given in payment and the legal currency is precisely so much 
property taken from one man and given to another, by legislative enact¬ 
ment.”— Webster, in Tariff Speech, in H. of R., Washington, Apr. 2, 182 4 . 

WHY SPAIN DEGENERATED 

“Unenlightened and bigoted legislation, the multitude of holidays, 
miserable roads, monopolies on the part of government, restrictive laws, 
that ought long since to have been abrogated, are generally, and I believe 
truly, reckoned the principal causes of the bad state of the productive 
industry of Spain.” 

—Webster in H. of R., Washington, D. C., Tariff speech, Apr. 2, 

182J^. 

MARTIN VAN BUREN’S FOX-LIKE TREAD 

“The Buffalo Platform was constructed of such slight materials that, 
while it would not bear a very heavy tread, it would sustain the fox-like 
footsteps of Mr. Van Buren.” As Mr. Webster said this, he thrummed his 
fingers down his coat-sleeve.— Speech in Faneuil Hall, Oct. 24 , 1848. 

CHARITY LENDING A MANTLE 

“If this bill passes,” at this point Webster brought his fist down 
against his desk, and as the blood trickled down his fingers, he wound 
his handkerchief around them, adding, “charity will have to lend a mantle 
to wrap the pale corpse of a nation’s credit.” 

EDUCATION—SCHOLARS, HOW MADE 

“Costly apparatus and splendid cabinets have no magical power to 
make scholars. In all circumstances, as a man is, under God, the master 
of his own fortune, so is he the maker of his own mind. The Creator has 
so constituted the human intellect that it can grow by its own action 
only; and by its own action it will certainly and necessarily grow. Every 
man must, therefore, educate himself. His book and teacher are but 
helps; the work is his. A man is not educated until he has the ability to 
summon, in any emergency, all his mental powers to vigorous exercise 
and control them in that exercise to effect his purposed object. It is 
not the man who has seen most, or read most, or heard most, who can do 
this; such a man is in danger of being borne down, like a beast of burden, 
by an overwhelming mass of other men’s thoughts. Nor is it the man who 
can boast of native vigor and capacity; the greatest of all warriors in 
the siege of Troy had not the pre-eminence because nature had given 
him strength and he carried the largest bow, but because self-discipline 
had taught him how to bend it.” 

— Webster to a graduating class, at Harvard, probably in 1845.' 

The above was found among his papers in his own hand-writing. 

— Author. 

“MURDER WILL OUT” 

“The deed was executed with a de^ee of self-possession and steadiness 
equal to the wdckedness with which it was planned. The circumstances 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 7o5 

now clearly in evidence spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep 
had fallen on the distinguished victim, and on all beneath his roof. A 
heathful old man to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of 
the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, 
through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. 
With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; 
he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reached the door of the chamber. 
Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns 
on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before 
liim. The room is uncommonly open to the admission of light. The 
face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams 
of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him 
where to strike. The fatal blow is given, and the victim passes without 
a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! 
It is the assassin’s purpose to make sure work; and he plies the dagger, 
though it is obvious that fife has been destroyed by the blow of the 
bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his 
aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! 
To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels for it, 
and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed 
is done. He retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as 
he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder. No eye has seen him, 
no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe! 

“Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be 
safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner 
where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that 
eye which pierces through all disguises, and beholds everything as in 
the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, 
even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that ‘murder will out.’ 
True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, 
that those who break the great law of Heaven by shedding man’s blood 
seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so 
much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or 
later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, 
every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand 
ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on 
the scene, shedding all the light and ready to kindle the slightest cir¬ 
cumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot 
keep its ovm secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible 
impulse of conscience to be true to itself, it labors under its guilty posses¬ 
sion, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made 
for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a 
torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is 
devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from 
heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to 
possess him; and. like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes 
him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels the beating of his 
heart, rising in his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole 
world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings 
in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays 
his discretion, it breaks down his courage, and conquers his prudence. 
When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of 
circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater 
violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed, there 
is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.” 

—From Webster s argument for the prosecution of John Francis 
Knapp for the murder of Jos. White, of Salem, Mass., on the night of 
Apr. 6, 1830. The verdict was *^Guilty.” 


756 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


Says “Savoyard:” “John Marshall, our greatest judge, thought Pinkney 
our greatest lawyer. Webster thought Mason was more than Pinkney’s 
equal, and there were good judges who thought Webster the superior 
of either of them.” 

Lawyers: “Most lawyers work hard, live well and die poor.” 

—A Saying of Webster’s. 

Daniel Webster: “Each of liis words weighed a pound.” 

— Was said of his style. 

Fluency of Sfeech: “Fluency in speech is like the departure of church¬ 
goers, the fewer in the house the faster they come out,” was one of 
Webster’s sayings. 


VALIDITY OF GIFTS FOR ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 

“A gift for the advancement of useful learning is the most meritorious 
charity that can be given. Most charities terminate with individuals, 
who are the objects of them. But donations of this kind are benefactions 
to the whole community. They furnish the means of bringing great 
and natural abilities out into public service and thereby become a charity 
not only to the persons who are so helped forward in their education, but 
to the whole society, which reaps the benefit of those parts and abilities 
in the several stations of life, where Providence places and employs them; 
and as Coke, in arguing Porter’s ease says: ‘No time was ever so bar¬ 
barous as to take away erudition and science.’ All people have at all 
times thought it most meritorious to promote and encourage them. 
Even Omar, who directed the Alexandrian library to be burnt, did not 
wage war against useful learning, but thought if the learning contained 
in those books did not agree with the Alcoran, it was noxious; and if it 
did, it was useless. It has been observed that it is an ostentatious attempt 
to perpetuate the testator’s name. Wishes of this kind often influence the 
wisest and best of men. There is nothing immoral in yielding to such a 
motive, if it was the sole and only motive of such a disposition. It is a 
passion implanted in the mind as a laudable incentive to industry, and 
the reward promised Abraham for his faith: ‘I will make thy name 
great among the nations.’ 

“The Barnardistons and Peters are to change their names; but that 
circumstance will not affect the validity of the devise; and why should 
that circumstance be more disgustful in one case than the other? To 
raise and establish a family in the testator’s name, by the medium of a 
college for the good of mankind, was his next object. Social affection was 
the object of that provision. 

“Admit'that vanity had some share in both the dispositions; it loses 
all its malignant qualities when it is productive of good. And in Popham, 
139, ascribing charitable gifts to vain glory and ostentation, is said to 
tend to a public wrong, because it deters and discourages them; and 
perhaps the world owes some of the greatest and noblest benefactions 
to this motive, acting in a thousand shapes and forms. It is a spring 
not to be checked and stopped up; because under the direction of good 
laws, it becomes an inexhaustible source of benefits to mankind. And 
courts of justice are not to examine, like casuists, the motives of such 
dispositions, but to execute or condemn them, according to their own 
intrinsic merit or demerit, let them proceed from what motives they will.” 

—Lord Chief Justice Wilmot {England), Atty. General 'v. Lady 

Downing, Wilmot’s opinions, 25-6. 



SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, lord alverstone (1842-1915), 

England 

DUAL SYSTEM—BARRISTERS AND SOLICITORS IN ENGLAND 

“I asked Mr. Benjamin his opinion on the question of whether the two 
systems should be fused, that the barrister to try the case in court, and 
that of the solicitor to prepare the brief, he having experienced both 
systems. He said he agreed that for a country with a long-established 
procedure, the English system was by far the best; but he thought that 
for a new and young country which had not reached the stage of final 
development, it would be difficult to maintain the separation which 
exists in this country, and that it was necessary that lawyers should 
be allowed to conduct cases in court as well as to act as solicitors. I 
can only say that in my opinion the existence of a body of men who 
devote themselves solely to advocacy, and have little or nothing to do with 
the cases until they are brought to them for conduct in court, has been 
of immense value to our English system of jurisprudence. The indepen¬ 
dence of the Bar arising from the absence of any personal interest in the 
success of proceedings has given them a position in public opinion which 
could not possibly be attained under any other system. Dealing with 
the question on its merits, in heavy litigation a properly instructed barris¬ 
ter with all the facts before him is, in my judgment, the best qualified 
person to present a case in a way which will attract the attention of, 
and be easily followed by, a tribunal which, for the first time, is called 
upon to listen to the merits of the case, whether of law or fact. The 
sohcitor who has been engaged in preparing the brief, and has perhaps 
brooded over it for several months, is apt to attach undue importance to 
particular incidents without sufficiently considering their bearing as a 
whole, or their weight in connection with other incidents and arguments 
in the case. I frequently discussed the question with Sir Charles Ruessll, 
and he entirely concurred in my opinion; he held that a barrister coming- 
new to the consideration of the facts is able to take a more detached 
view, putting the material incidents in their proper order, and not attach¬ 
ing undue importance to special facts.” 

—He succeeded Lord Russell as lord chief justice of England in 1900, 
at a salary of $li-0,000, writes Webster in his ''Recollections of Bench 
and Bar,” p. 227. 

“By the time I gave up practice in 1895 I received 3,330 retainers, of 
which 535 were general retainers, and 2,795 retainers in particular cases.” 

EXAMINATION-IN-CHIEF 

“For many years I have been struck by the fact that the importance 
of proper examination-in-chief of witnesses is not sufficiently studied 
by many members of the Bar, some of whom have attained considerable 
eminence as advocates. The fact is, that juries are told, and good juries 
know that they have to decide the case before them upon the evidence, 
and nothing is of greater moment than for the important witnesses on 
the one side or the other to give their evidence as a connected story, 
not suggested by leading questions, but at the‘same time kept in hand 
by the counsel who is examining them. I have not infrequently seen 
both while at the Bar and on the Bench, the effect of evidence practically 
destroyed by the slovenly, haphazard way in which witnesses were examin¬ 
ed. I had the great advantage of having to practice for many years 
before Chief Justice Cockburn, who was, of all Judgef, the man who 
paid most attention to the way in which witnesses were examined, and 
if the story was given with the facts not in their proper order in point 
of date, he would break out with strong remonstrances to counsel. I 


758 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


well remember a junior experience answering, when Cockburn complained 
of the way in which the witness was being examined and of the broken 
character of his story, ‘I was only taking it from my proof, my Lord.’ 
‘Proof!’ said Cockburn, ‘you ought to be able to examine your witnesses 
without looking at your proof.’ Which was a perfectly just observation. 
Cross-examination is far easier than examination-in-chief. In cross- 
examination, one cannot avoid getting answers which are not desirable, 
as one has to put leading questions and points of contradiction to hostile 
witnesses; but in chief a great deal depends upon the way in which 
witnesses are examined. I made a great study of this for many years, 
and have been gratified by the compliments I received from my leaders, 
and occasionally from the Bench.” 

—'^Recollections of Bench and Bar,” pp. 283-5. 

THE PROFESSION OF LAW 

“The Bar is a great profession for men of ability and industry. I have 
often said that, given that a man who knows his work, has the courage 
and perseverence to go through the period of waiting, he will ultimately 
succeed. Of course, there are degrees of success, and luck or good fortune 
has a great deal to do with the amount of it. But all said and done, if 
a man is competent, and has the courage to stick to his work, I do not 
believe in absolute failure. Sir John Karslake, when asked What were the 
three things necessary for success at the Barf^said the first was tact, 
the second tact, the third tact. He was not far wrong. I have seen 
many errors made, cases lost, and clients affronted by a want of ordinary 
tact on the part of the barrister. Of course, it will be remembered that 
when Sir Edward Clarke was asked what were the three essentials, he 
replied: ‘To be very poor, very ambitious, and very much in love.’ 
No doubt these qualifications also may have much to do with a man’s 
success. I knew one barrister who for eight years never got any work 
at all. He was of untiring energy and very able. He stuck to his work 
manfully, and in the end, acquired a very large practice.” 

—"Recollections of Bench and Bar.” 

SHORT SKETCH OF WEBSTER 

“Viscount Alverstone (Sir Richard Webster), for nearly thirty years 
Lord Chief Justice of England, was one of the most popular, human 
and many-sided men in British pubhc life. Tall, athletically modeled and 
vigorous, he was a splendid specimen of the old school of English gentle¬ 
men. In sports he won many trophies on the cinder track. He was an en¬ 
thusiastic rider and a good hand at golf, and a frequent visitor to the 
National Sporting Club. He came into prominence before the American 
public as the representative of England on the Alaskan boundary commis¬ 
sion. His voice in support of the chief claims of the U. S. gave America 
the practical victory. Many Canadians professed to believe, and with 
bitterness asserted, that the American government went into the arbitra¬ 
tion only after it had reached an understanding that the American case 
should win, and that Alverstone was put forward to carry out the diplo¬ 
matic bargain. Previous to the Alaskan commission, Lord Alverstone, 
then Richard E. Webster, rendered good service to his government as one 
of the British counsel before the Venezuelan boundary commission, 
which met in Paris as a result of President Cleveland’s famous war 
message. Lord Alverstone was considered one of the leading lawyers of 
his time, and had a keen sympathy, acute knowledge of men and great 
insight into affairs, and a wide knowledge of his profession, all obtained 
by hard work. He was born in 1842. His father was Thomas Webster, 
Q. C., weU known at Westminster, where he had a large practice, especially 
in patent cases. As Lord Chief Justice of England, he received a salary 
of $40,000 a year. — The Author. 


ALEXANDER WEDDERBURN, lord Loughborough 
(1733-1805), England 

AGAINST THE COLONIES 

“It will be found necessary to disregard their charters (those of the 
Colonies) if you mean to restore subordination among them; but I hope 
and firmly wish that even the idea of your authority being known to 
them will at once prevent the exertion of it, I agree with the honorable 
gentleman (Colonel Barre) that concihation is desirable; but while you 
hold out the olive branch in one hand, you must ^asp your sword in the 
other. Peace will be established on proper principles when there is 
power to enforce it; and your authority once established, I would then 
drop the point of the sword, and stretch out the olive branch to the 
vanquished.”— Speech in Parliament. 

When Loughborough died in 1805 of gout in the stomach. Geo. Ill 
was graciously pleased to exclaim, “Then he has not left a greater knave 
behind in my dominions.” It is related that when Thurlow was told 
this remark of the King, he vented his spleen against both parties by 
observing, with an oath, “I perceive that his Majesty is quite sane at 
present.” (Geo. Ill was supposed to be insane.) 

—6 Lives of the Chancellors, 33If.-n. 

Said Thurlow: “If I was as tired as a toad in a well, I could kick that 
fellow Loughborough heels over head any day in the week. He has the 
gift of gab in a marvellous degree, but he is no lawyer. In the House of 
Lords I get Kenyon or somebody to start some law doctrine in such a 
manner that the fellow must get up to answer it, and then I leave the 
woolsack, and give him such a thump in his bread-basket that he cannot 
recover himself.”— 1 Twiss' Life of Elden, 122. 

Ellenborough, when censured by the ladies for remaining away from 
them to talk law, he replied, “Madam, I beg your pardon: we have not 
been talldng law; we have been talking of one of the decisions of Lord 
Loughborough.”— 6 Lives Chancellors, 250-1. 

“Wedderburn died childless, the twice wedded, unbeloved, busy only 
in getting everything he could as the wages of corruption. When he 
died no Senate spoke his praise‘ no poet embalmed his memory, no man 
mourned, and the King hearing that he was certainly gone, said only: 
“He has not left a greater knave behind him in my kingdom.” 

— Geo. Bancroft in 3 U. S. History, f6Jf. 

THE PRESS 

“I am far from adopting the creed of my honorable and learned friend 
the Attorney-General, ‘that if we were less learned we should be better 
men.’ I hold, on the contrary, that the diffusion of learning, by the 
liberty of the press, is necessary to public liberty and public morality. 
Like all the great and powerful nations that ever existed, we are tending 
towards effeminacy. What then would become of us without the press? 
Not to* speak of the rational and elegant amusements which it affords, we 
owe to it all the spirit which remains in the nation. Were an imprimatur 
clapped upon it, and a Hcenser appointed, we should soon come to the 
last stage of barbarism. We should be worse than Turks and infidels, the 
setting of the sun of science being much more gloomy and dismal than 


760 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


the dark hour which precedes its rise. Let us then guard the liberty of 
the press as watchfully as the dragon did the Hesperian fruit. Next 
to the privileges of this house and the rights of juries, it is the main prop 
of the Constitution. Nay, without it 1 fear the other two would prove 
very ineffectual. Tho it be sometimes attended with inconveniences, 
would you abolish it? According to tliis reasoning, what would become 
of the greatest blessings of society? None of them come pure and 
unmixed.”— Speech in the House of Commons. 

Says Irving Browne: “Wedderburn was a most accomplished political 
debater and orator; Campbell thinks the greatest for a lawyer, that ever 
sat in the House of Commons. ‘More sarcastic than Murray, more for¬ 
cible than Pratt, more polished than Dunning, more conciliatory than 
Thuiiow, he combined in himself the great physical and intellectual 
requisites for swaying a gentleman-like mob.” 

— From'' 'Short Studies of Great Lawyers” p. 66. 


IMMORTALITY 

‘‘When an intellectual being finds himself on this earth, as soon as the 
faculties of reason operate, one of the first inquiries of his mind is: ‘Shall 
I be here always?’ ‘Shall I live here forever?’ And reasoning from what 
he sees daily occurring to others, he learns to a certainty that his state 
of being must one day be changed. I do not mean to deny that it may 
be true that he is created with his consciousness; but whether it be 
consciousness, or the result of his reasoning faculties, man soon learns 
that he must die. And of all sentient beings, he alone, so far as we can 
judge, attains to this knowledge. His maker has made him capable of 
learning this. Before he knows his origin and destiny, he knows that he 
is to die. Then comes that most urgent and solemn demand for light 
that ever proceeded or can proceed, from the profound and anxious 
broodings of the human soul. It is stated with wonderful force and 
beauty in that incomparable composition, the book of Job: ‘For there is 
hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the 
tender branch thereof vdll not cease; that, through the scent of water it 
will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant. 'But if a man die, shall 
he live againf And that question nothing but God and the religion of 
God, can solve. Religion does solve it and teaches every man that he 
is to live again and that the duties of this life have reference to the life 
which is to come. And hence, since the introduction of Christianity, it 
has been the duty, as it has been the effort of the great and the good, 
to sanctify human knowledge, to bring it to the front and to baptize 
learning into Christianity; to gather up all its productions, its earliest 
and its latest, its blossoms and its fruits, and lay them all upon the altar 
of religion and virtue.” 

—Daniel Webster from his three-day argument in the Girard Will 

Case, in U. S. Supreme Court. 



FRANCIS WHARTON (1820-1889), Pennsylvania 

KNOWLEDGE 

“Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect 
knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our 
capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowl¬ 
edge, and knowledge mingled with ignorance producing doubt.” 

—1 Wharton on Evidence, p. 10. 


JUDGE GRIER OF THE U. S. CIRCUIT COURT, ON GOODYEAR’S 
RIGHTS AS TO HIS PATENTS IN INDIA RUBBER 

“It is due to Mr. Goodyear to say, that upon examining the certificate 
of Professor Silliman, and other evidence in the case, I am entirely satisfied 
that he is the original inventor of the process of vulcanizing rubber, and 
that he is not only entitled to the relief which he asks, but to all the merits 
and benefits of that discovery. Many persons had made experiments— 
they had used sulphur, lead, and heat, before Goodyear’s patents, and, 
probably, before his discovery. But to what purpose? Their experiments 
ended in discovering nothing, except, perhaps, that they had ruined 
themselves. The great difference between them and Goodyear is, that 
he persisted in his experiments, and finally succeeded in perfecting a 
valuable discovery, and they failed. * * * It is when speculation 

has been reduced to practice, when e^tperiment has resulted in discovery, 
and when that discovery has been perfected by patent and continued 
experiments—when some new compound, art, manufacture, or machine, 
has been thus produced, which is useful to the public, that the party 
making it becomes a public benefactor, and entitled to a patent.” 

•James Parton, one of his biographer’s adds: “Those who would 
censure Mr. Goodyear for permitting his estate to become so much 
involved should consider that his discovery was not profitable to himself 
for more than ten years, that he was deeply in debt when he began his 
experiments, that his investigations could be carried on only by increasing 
his indebtedness, that all his bargains were those of a man in need, that 
the guilelessness of his nature made him the easy prey of greedy, dis¬ 
honorable men, and that his neglect of his private interests was due to 
his zeal for the public good.” 

The committee acted favorably on his application for renewal enabl¬ 
ing him to enter afresh upon the study of his life. , Mr. Goodyear was 
born in New Haven, Conn., Dec. 29, 1800, and died July 1, 1860. 

— The Author. 


THEOPHILUS PARSONS, JR., ON LEMUEL SHAW 

“Judge Shaw carried to the bench ability, industry, learning, sagacity 
and integrity; and upon him rested the hopes these would inspire. These 
high qualities were enfeebled by those counteracting weaknesses others 
have overcome, but few have found no need of overcoming. Vanity—the 
love of distinction, applause and popularity, is called a universal passion; 
but it had no place in him. We seldom find those in high places, who do 
not need to remember the forgetting of self; but this thought never came 
to him; and there was never any reason for its coming.” 

—Frederick II. Chase’s 'Life of Shaw’. 




EDWARD DOUGLASS WHITE (1845- ), Louisiana 

PEN-PICTURE OF CHIEF JUSTICE EDWARD DOUGLAS WHITE 

“Within the Court it was the Judge’s custom, as a case was argued, 
to lean back his head upon his chair, with eyes closed, apparently asleep. 
It was disconcerting for lawyers to continue to a chief justice whom, 
it would seem, their argument was not sufficiently lucid to interest, but 
even to keep awake. But suddenly the Chief Justice would lean forward, 
open his eyes, and ask a question summing up the entire case as it had 
progressed to that moment, showing his complete grasp of every thread 
of the argument. The curious explanation of this habit was vouchsafed 
by the Chief Justice to a jurist of a lower court, who one day, out of 
chambers, asked point-blank the reason. Chief Justice White explained 
that some years ago he contracted the habit, which he could not shake off, 
of watching the swift contortions and changes of the mouths of lawyers 
when addressing the court. His gaze would become fixed upon the human 
mouth before him, and he found it impossible to avoid letting his mind 
wander from the course of the argument. Therefore, to do justice to 
the causes presented before him, he adopted the plan of leaning back 
and listening with closed eyes. He prided himself upon his memory, 
which was unusually keen. He seldom referred to the text of an opinion 
he had written, when he delivered it in court. He would dictate it to a 
stenographer, and then not look at it again. When he took his seat to 
deliver the opinion, he would recite it from memory, with every citation, 
every word, exactly as written. 

“One of the exceedingly long opinions which he so delivered was the 
Minnesota rate case, determining the power of the interstate commerce 
commission to set rates for interstate business which had relation to 
interstate business.” 

Edward Douglass White was born in 1845 in the parish of Lafouche, 
Louisiana, and was educated at Mount St. Mary’s College, Maryland, 
the Jesuit College, New Orleans, and Georgetown College, D. C. During 
part of the Civil war he served in the Confederate army, and was admitted 
to the Louisiana bar in 1868. In 1874-78 he served as a state senator, 
was associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court (1878-91), United 
States senator (1891-94), and in 1894 was appointed associate justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States; and in 1910 was appointed 
Chief Justice of that Court by President Taft. He died in office. May 
19, 1921.— Avthor. 

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT WRITTEN BY HIM 

“This is my last will. I give, bequeath and devise to my wife, Letitia 
M. White, in complete and perfect ownership, all my rights and property 
of every kind and nature, whether real, personal or mixed, wherever 
situated, appointing her executrix of my estate without bond and giving 
her seisin thereof.” 


CHIEF JUSTICE J. E. WILMOT (1709-1792), England 


THE COMMON LAW 

“In truth, the common law is nothing else but statutes worn out.” 

Was judge of the court of king’s bench, from 1755 to 1770, when upon 
the resignation of Lord Camden, he was offered the great seal which 
was tendered him by the Duke of Grafton, which he refused; and during 
the same year, again declined the Chief Justiceship, at the hands of Lord 
North. His knowledge was extensive and profound, and was by no 
means confined to his profession. He was a great general scholar. 


DANIEL WEBSTER’S PENETRATING LOOK 

“His eyes, though deep-set, were so penetrating that few guilty men 
could endure their piercing gaze. One of his clients in a case of consider¬ 
able importance informed him that he thought a witness on the other 
side intended to commit perjury. ‘Point him out when he comes into 
the court-room,’ said Webster. The witness soon appeared and took a 
seat in a swaggering manner, when looking toward the bar his eyes met 
those of Webster fixed steadily upon him. He immediately looked in 
another direction, but, as if fascinated, he soon turned his face again 
toward Webster, to meet those deep, penetrating eyes, which seemed to 
read his very soul. He moved nervously for a few moments, then rose 
and left the court-house, to which he could not be induced to return.” 

— McCulloch's ‘■Men and Measures of Half a Century', 19. 


FRANCIS BACON 

“The quality of Bacon’s mind, by which he was preeminently distin¬ 
guished—a quality, which of all others is the most distinctive of genius— 
was that variety, that universality of intellectual powers, which enabled 
him to embrace all nature in the ample vision of his capacious soul. 
Thus largely endowed, his faculties were kept in unceasing activity by 
their native force; the voice of fame was to him an unnecessary stimulus, 
and he never sought extensive and indiscriminate applause. Yet his 
studies were always the principal business of his life. His great aim in 
philosophical pursuits was to discover remedies for all human ills. Hence, 
he modestly stiles himself, in his letter to Fulgention, ‘the Servant of 
Posterity;’ and thought, and the event proved, himself to have been 
born for the use of human kind. * * * 

“At twelve years of age he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, graduat¬ 
ing at sixteen. While in college he took issue with the Aristotelian system 
(then perdominant) ‘not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom 
he would ever ascribe all high abilities, but for the unfruitfulness of the 
way; being a philosophy only for disputations and contentions, but 
barren in the production of works for the benefit of the life of man.’ 
At the age of twenty-eight he was. appointed by Queen Elizabeth her 
counsel extraordinary, and formed, if he did not mature, the plan of his 
great philosophical work.”— 'The British Plutarch,' Art. Bacon. 




JAMES WILSON (1742-1798), Pennsylvania 

SOVEREIGNTY 

“Upon what principle is it contended that the sovereign power resides 
in the state governments? The honorable gentleman has said trulj* 
that there can be.no subordinate sovereignty. Now, if there cannot, 
my position is that the sovereignty resides in the people. They have 
not parted with it; they have only dispensed such portions of power as 
were conceived necessary for the public welfare. This constitution stands 
upon this broad principle. * * When the principle is once settled 

that the people are the source of authority, the consequence is that they 
may take from the subordinate governments p.owers with which they 
have hitherto trusted them, and place those powers in the general govern¬ 
ment, if it is thought that they will be productive of more good. They 
can distribute one portion of power to the more contracted circle called 
state governments; they can also furnish another proportion to the 
government of the United States. Who will undertake to say as a state 
officer that the people may not give to the general government what 
powers and for what purposes they please? How comes it, sir, that 
these state governments dictate to their superiors? To the majesty 
of the people? When I say the majesty of The people, I mean the 
thing, and not a mere compliment, to them. * * * truth is, 

and it is a leading principle in this system, that not the states only but 
the people also shall be represented. * * * j j^ave no idea that a 

safe system of power in the government, sufficient to manage the general 
interest of the United States, could be drawn from any other source or 
vested in any other authority than that of the people at large, and I 
consider this authority as the rock on which this structure will stand.” 

George Washington sent his nephew, Bushrod Washington, to Phil¬ 
adelphia, in 1782, passing by the Wythes and Pendletons of Virginia, to 
study with Wilson, whom he paid S500 to instruct the pupil. 

— The above is from debate in the Constitutional Convention. 

THE PEOPLE THE SOURCE OF POWER 

“The truth is that in our government the supreme absolute, and 
uncontrollable power remains in the people. As our constitutions are 
superior to our legislatures, so the people are superior to the constitutions. 
Indeed, the superiority, in the last instance, is much the greater; for the 
people possess, over our constitutions, control in act as weU as in right.” 

—James Wilson, speech in Ratification of the Constitution in Penn. 

Sanderson, in his “Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence,” calls Madison and Wilson the ablest members of the convention. 


JEREMIAH M. WILSON, Washington, D. C. 

THE CONTRACT OF MARRIAGE 

“But this defendant asks a jury to villify, traduce and blacken the 
character of a woman he had destroyed. Gentlemen, what are you going 
to do? We cannot have any more of those reparations of Absalom to 
Ammon. In those days it would have been simple. In these days the 
law has provided a javelin, not the javelin of the servants of Absalom, 
but your verdict. By that this wrong is to be repaired; no other way 
now. Before you the woman comes as the law says she shall, and what 
will you do? I invite you as my last words to impale him, hold turn aloft, 
that the world may be Varned and justice will cry amen and amen.” 
—His concluding words in Pollard vs. BrecJcenridge, for breach of 
contract of marriage, Apr. IJf., 1894-. 


ORATORY 

“It is a popular idea that those who are gifted with oratorical power 
have few other gifts, that theit influence perishes with the moving of 
popular audiences and that they have not the power they show in arous¬ 
ing the multitude. In many cases this is so, but those who move public 
sentiment move it different degrees. Public sentiment also is of two 
different kinds; the voice of the people, which is the hurried result of the 
untrained and uninstructed emotions, and that voice of the people, 
uttered after due thought and experience, which is the solid and enduring 
basis of human action. Gales, which are but air in motion, may toss the 
surface of the seas into wild and ravening waves; but the great strength 
of the ocean is underneath it .all and aided by the steadfast genius of man 
transports to every shore the products of every land. 

“Men who stir the surface of thought for the moment may be inferior 
and command little permanent respect, but the great orators have left 
too many landmarks behind them to be confounded with retoricians 
and men of the moment. We have not one of his orations left by which 
we might judge for ourselves, but if there be anything in the testimony of 
all the men of his time, Julius Caesar is entitled to rank among the great¬ 
est orators of his age. Yet however much we may mourn over the pass¬ 
age of the Rubicon, we cannot deny to Caesar the highest rank of all those 
who have managed the affairs of practical life. Daniel Webster, who 
was our greatest orator, has never been denied the rank of a great man. 
Henry Clay, whose oratory was of that sympathetic kind which we most 
suspect, was the most powerful party leader who ever^ dictated his will 
to others. While we must acknowledge the faults of Cicero, we can also 
demonstrate that his great superior, ‘The Orator’ himself, has not only 
left behind him orations which are the models for the emulation of all 
the world, but also the memory of a life of imtriotic devotion and wisdom, 
which, if the Immortal Gods had so willed, might have saved to Athens 
its pre-eminence among the cities of Greece and preserved the liberties 
of the ancient world.”— Thos. B. Reed. 



WOODROW WILSON (1856- ) 

PUBLIC SUPPORT 

“I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to 
my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel 
and sustain me.” 

-—Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of U.S. Born, Staunton, Va., 1856. 
CHANGING MIND 

“The minute I stop changing my mind as President with the change 
of all the circumstances in the world, I will be a back number.” 

— Woodrow Wilson, address Railway Ass'n, N. Y. City, Jan. 17,’16. 

AMERICA UNAFRAID 

“America is not afraid of anybody. I know that I express your feelings 
and the feelings of all our fellow-citizens when I say that the only thing 
I am afraid of is not being ready to perform my duty. I am afraid of the 
danger of shame; I am afraid of the danger of inadequacy; I am afraid 
of the danger of not being able to express the great character of this 
country with tremendous might and effectiveness whenever we are called 
upon to act in the field of the world’s affairs, for it is character we are 
going to express, not power merely.” 

— Woodrow Wilson, speech in Cleveland, ()., Jan. 29, ’16. 

CHARACTER BETTER THAN PEACE 

“There is something that the American people love better than they 
love peace. They love the principles upon which their political life is 
founded. They are ready at any time to fight for the vindication of their 
character and of their honor. They will at no tiihe seek a contest, but 
they will at no time craven to avoid it. Because if there is one thing 
that every nation ought to fight for, it is tffe integrity of its own convic¬ 
tions. We cannot surrender our convictions. I would rather surrender 
territory than surrender ideals, which are the chief staff of life for the 
soul itself.” 

— Woodrow Wilson, to Railway Ass’n, N. Y. City, Jan. 27, ’16. 

Mr. Wilson graduated at Princeton, 1879; studied law at the Univer¬ 
sity of J’^a., practiced in Atlanta, Ga., 1882-3. 

LOUIS D. BRANDEIS 

“Let me say, by Avay of summing up, my dear senator (Culberson), 
that I nominated Mr. Brandeis for the supreme court because it was and 
is my deliberate judgment that of all the men at the bar who it has been 
my privilege to observe, test and know, he is exceptionally qualified. 

I cannot speak too highly of his impartial, impersonal, orderly and con¬ 
structive mind, his rare analytical powers, his deep human sympathy, 
his profound acquaintance with the historical root of our institutions 
and insight into their spirit, or of the many evidences he has given of 
being imbued to the very heart with our American ideals of justice and 
equality of opportunity; of his knowledge of modern economic conditions 
and of the way they bear upon the masses of the people, or of his genius 
in getting persons to unite in common and harmonious actions and look¬ 
ing with frank and kindly eye into each other’s minds who had before 
been heated antagonists. This friend of justice and of men will ornament 
the high court of which we are all so justly proud.” 

— Woodrow Wilson’s letter to Senator Culberson, at the latter’s request, 

May, 1916. 


WILLIAM WIRT (1772-1834), Maryland 

READING AND ELOQUENCE 

“Get a habit, a passion for reading; not flying from book to book, 
with the squeamish caprice of a literary epicure; but read systematically, 
closely, thoughtfully, analyzing every subject as you go along and laying 
it up carefully and safely in your memory. It is only by this mode 
that your information will be at the same time extensive, accurate and 
useful. * * * To be buried in the law for eight or ten years, without 

the power of opening a book of taste for a single day! O, horrible! 
horrible! most horrible! O, for that wealth that would enable me to 
wander at large through the fields of general literature as whim or feel¬ 
ing might direct, for days and weeks and months together, and thus to 
raise, enhghten and refine my mind and heart, until I become a fit inhabi¬ 
tant for those brighter fields of light that lie above us. * * * 

your arguments at the bar let argument strongly predominate. Sacrifice 
your flowers, and let your columns be Doric, rather than Composite, 
the better medium is Ionic. Avoid, as you would the gates of death, 
the reputation of floridity.’’ 

—From letter to Dabney Carr, Dec. 17, 1810, 1 Kennedy's ‘Life of 
Wirt', 262. 

PATRICK HENRY’S ELOQUENCE 

“Patrick Henry’s eloquence was poured forth from inexhaustible 
resources, and assumed every variety of hue and form and motion that 
could amaze or persuade, instruct or astonish. Sometimes it was the 
limpid rivulet, murmuring down the mountain side and winding its 
silver comse between margins of moss, then gradually swelling to a 
bolder head, it roared in the headlong cataract and spread its rainbows 
to the sun; now it moved on in tranquil majesty, Hke a river of the West, 
reflecting from its polished surface, forest, and cliff, and sky; anon, it 
was the angry ocean, chafed by the tempest, hanging its billows, with 
deafening clamors, among the crackling shrouds, or hurling them in 
sublime defiance of the storm that frowned above.’’— William Wirt's Life 
of Patrick Henry, p. 312. 

Thos. Jefferson thought the above passage “a little too poetical;’’ 
Judge Parker, “there was too much of it;’’ Judge Brockenborough 
thought it “too flowery;’’ Judge Cabell, that Jefferson’s criticism was 
“groundless;’’ Mr. Upshur, to whom Wirt read it, pronounced it “beauti¬ 
ful.” Mr. Clark to whom it was read, with tear-filled eyes and raptur¬ 
ous admiration, swore that “that was the very kind of writing that had 
made the ‘British Spy’ so popular.” Wirt himself was at a loss how to 
decide, but thought he would “hazard it, though not without fear and 
trembling.” Said he would “rather have faults than to have no beauties; 
and who that ever had beauties was without fault? The most beautiful 
author in the world is perhaps the fullest of faults as Shakespeare.” 

— Wirt's ‘Life of Henry. 

PAUCITY OF GREAT MEN 

“I believe the paucity of great men in all ages has proceeded from the 
universality of indolence. Indolence is natural to man, and it is only 
the brave few who can ‘clear the copse at a bound, break over the magic 
bourne and stretch away with ‘an eye that never winks and a wing 
that never tires,’ into new regions and new worlds, who distinguish 
themselves from the crowd, and rise to glory that never fades.” 

—From Letter to Francis W. Gilmer, Nov. 16, 1813, 1 Kennedys ‘Life 
of Wirt,' 32If.. 


768 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


COMMON SENSE 

“Common sense is a much rarer quality than genius. Common sense 
instructs us when to speak, when to be silent, when to act and when to 
be still—and, moreover, it teaches us what to speak and what to suppress, 
what to do and what to forbear.’’ 

THE ELOQUENCE OF MADISON 

Wirt said, Madison being accused of a want of energy, that he stood 
up against Patrick Henry’s opposition to the Constitution and carried 
the day in Virginia; that he resisted infraction of the Constitution, even 
by Washington. Said Wirt: 

“But if true energy be evinced, as^we think^it|is, by the calm and 
dignified, yet steady, zealous and persevering pursuit of an object, his 
whole conduct during the debate in Congress during the adoption and 
first years under the Federal Constitution, and while he was in the 
minority, is honorably marked with energy. And that energy rested 
on the most solid and durable basis, conscious rectitude; supported by 
the most profound and extensive information, by an habitual power of 
investigation which unraveled with intuitive certainty the most intricate 
subjects, and an eloquence, chaste, luminous and cogent, which won 
respect, while it forced conviction. Your idea of energy is a constitu¬ 
tional irritability; you indulge it, and you -call that indulgence energy. 
Sudden fits of spleen, transient starts of passion, wild paroxysms of fury; 
the more slow and secret workings of envy and resentment, cruel taunts 
and sarcasm, the dreams of disordered fancy, the crude abortions of 
shortsighted theory, the delirium and ravings of a hectic fever—this is 
your notion of energy. * * * Wretched, most wretched, is the fate 

of the writer or that man who deserts the plain highway of conscience 
and of candor for the dark and crooked mazes of intrigue and cunning 
of trick and misrepresentation; he may, as the wise son of Sirach has said, 
‘work his way for a time, like a mole under ground, but by-and-by he 
blunders into fight and stands exposed with all his dirt upon his head.” 
—From letter to Richmond Enquirer {to those objecting to Madison 
for president, in 1808), 1 Kennedy’s 'Life of Wirt,’ 221-2. 

RESTRAINT 

“Mr. President, there is no good that does exist, or can exist, unless 
guarded by restraint. The best things that we enjoy, the noblest qualities 
that we possess, become vicious by excess. Mercy degenerates into 
weakness, generosity into waste, economy into penury, justice into 
cruelty, ambition into crime. * * * Look where you will, then, 

sir; above you, around you; below you, you see that the great conserva¬ 
tive principle is restraint—that same restraint which holds human society 
together.” 

— William Wirt.—From speech in defense of Judge Peck on im¬ 
peachment before the U. S. Senate, 1831. 

“Wirt’s career has been one of the longest and most brilliant in the 
U. S.,” said Webster. 

TRISTRAM SHANDY—BY LAWRENCE STERNE 

“Tristram Shandy is a whimsical book which everybody justly censures 
and admires alternately; and which will continue to be read, abused 
aud devoured, with ever fresh delight, so long as the world shall relish 
a joyous laugh, or a tear of the most delicious feeling.” 

— JFni. Wirt," The British Spy,” p. 187. 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


769 


A JUST GOVERNMENT 

“Algernon Sidney has said that he deems all studies unworthy the 
serious regard of a man, except the study of the principles of a just 
government.”—lEm. Wirt, ''The British Spy,” p. 176. 

Wirt was Attorney-General of the U. S. for 12 years, the longest term 
ever held by any man in the history of the country. 

THE LAW—A FEUDAL CASTLE 

“There is a great deal of law learning that is dry, dark, cold, revolting; 
but it is an old feudal castle, in perfect preservation, which the legal 
architect, who aspires to the first honors of his profession will delight 
to explore, and learn all the uses to which its various parts used to be 
put; and he will the better understand, enjoy and relish the progressive 
improvements of the science in modern times.” — William Wirt. 

CURIOSITY 

“Seize the moment of excited curiosity or any subject to solve your 
doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may 
remain in ignorance.”— Wm. Wirt. 

William Pinkey: “Pinkey wielded the club of Hercules adorned with 
flowers.”— William Wirt. 

MOVED TO RICHMOND WHEN 34 

Up to 1806, when 34, he moved from Norfolk to Richmond. And was 
noted principally as a criminal lawyer. 

HIS AMBITION 

“Wirt’s ambition was neither legal nor political, but literary. It is 
undeniable that he was never a ‘black letter’ lawyer. He himself fre¬ 
quently and bitterly complained that he could never descend into the 
depths plumbed by others. His legal ambitions were of two kinds; that 
which arose extra from the incentive of the necessary support of his 
family, and more potently, that which arose from his inner spirit of 
emulation. * * * Por the law, per se, he had no especial en¬ 

thusiasm. He grew up with it, and it was only his comfortable, and 
sometimes pleasant means of livelihood. But he exulted in the glorious 
dust of the arena, and arose like Antaeus from every grapple doubly 
strong for its successor.” 

—John Iladly Hall, on “Wirt,” in Great American Lawyers, vol. 2, 
p. 277. 

SUMMARY OF CHARACTER AND ATTAINMENT 

“In summing up his character and attainments, it is impossible to 
credit him with genius. Talent he had in profusion. He possessed an 
adaptability which carried him on from a raw German boy to the pink 
of old Virginia gentility, and from a scatter-brained young circuit- 
rider to the steadiest among the brilliant lights of the bar. He had a 
vivacity of mind and of fancy which carried him in full career against 
the object of his more immediate ambition. And, with it all, he had an 
unfaihng good judgment, which made him his own best critic, enabled 
him to appraise at its true value the glittering and superficial, and impelled 
him through life to strive continually to be the solid advocate rather than 
the showy orator. In this he occasionally failed, but he never ceased 
to deplore his own excesses, and to hark back to his ideals, whom he often 


770 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


declared were John Locke and John Marshall. During his life he crossed 
swords with all the great lawyers of that great period of legal history, 
with Pinkney, Webster, Sergeant, Harper, Randolph, Taney, and many 
others. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Kent and Adams were his personal 
friends. Marshall was his avowed model. For Calhoun he expressed the 
warmest regard, while repudiating the doctrine of nullification. Only 
for Edmund Randolph and Pinkney does he seem to have entertained 
feelings of antagonism. These were serious men, conscious of power, 
and domineering by nature. And it is probable that their majestic pose 
was an offense to the lighter disposition, and the incentive to the mischie¬ 
vous wit of the younger man.” 

—John Handy Hall on Gt. Am. Lawyers, Vol. 2, p. 306. 

RUFUS CHOATE ON WIRT 

“Wirt, at thirty-five years of age, was, I think, the most interesting 
man of the profession of our country. Webster and Pinkney had not 
then come out in national relief. With them letters were an after acquisi¬ 
tion, with Wirt the literature was originally congenial. I didn’t hear 
him in his prime (Choate read law with Wirt, in 1821), for the winter I 
was in his office he was struck down in the middle of preparing a great 
case by a sort of paralysis, brought on entirely by overwork. Wirt told 
me once that he sat right behind Webster in the Dartmouth College 
ease, and he didn’t hear anything of that pathetic peroration which 
Goodrich describes; at least he wasn’t impressed with anything in partic¬ 
ular about it. I think Wirt’s argument in Burr’s case, and on the 
motion to exclude all the testimony as to what occurred in other parts 
than the venue, his greatest effort on record.” 

— Parker's Reminiscences of R. Choate, pp. 271-2. 

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF A TECHNICALITY 

In 1806, George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, 
and Chancellor of Virginia, lived in Richmond, and a nephew named 
Swinney, to whom it was known that he had left most of his property 
by will, was one of his family. One morning Swinney came into the kitchen 
and in the presence of a negro cook, dropped what she described as 
something white in the coffee pot. The Chancellor soon after breakfast 
became violently ill, with symptoms of arsenical poisoning. A man 
servant drank of the same coffee and died with similar symptoms. The 
coffee grounds were thrown out in the back yard, and some chickens 
which ate them died. An examination by chemists showed the presence 
of arsenic in the coffee grounds, in large quantity. The Chancellor 
lived long enough to alter his will and revoke its disposition in favor 
of his nephew, who was soon afterwards indicted for murder. 

Swinney’s mother applied to Wirt to defend him. Wirt took counsel 
with one of the judges of the State, who advised him strongly to do so, 
and said that he ought not to hesitate a moment. He accepted the 
retainer and appeared for the accused. There was a perfect defense. 
The law of Virginia at that period excluded the testimony of negro 
witnesses when offered against a white man. The negro cook was the 
only witness that could connect Swinney with the crime. She beiing 
excluded, the jury, when the case came on, rendered a verdict of acquittal. 
Says Simeon E. Baldwin, in The Young Man and the Law, page 85: 
“There was a perfect defense. Wirt was right. If Virginia then had an 
ill-considered ’ statute, which prevented the State from offering legal 
proof of the guilt of the accused, the defense was perfect. Swinney 
could have honestly raised that point, namely, the objection to the 
evidence and the proper manner of taking advantage of it. Not knowing 
these things, he was entitled to ask the aid of those who did.” 


EDWARD 0. WOLCOTT (1848-1905), Colorado 


TRIBUTE TO THE JEWS 

“From the earliest times the Jews furnished the physicians of the 
world. In the tenth century there was no court in Europe where they 
were not the official physicians. For hundreds of years they held their 
prestige; and their discoveries, their learning, and their independent 
thought probably did more to tear down the walls of superstition in the 
Middle Ages and make way for the Reformation than any other influence. 
* * * Long before the Christian era, the Jews had emigrated into 

every portion of the known world, and were everywhere welcomed. 
Alexander the Great had planted a colony of them in Alexandria, and 
Caesar counted them among his most brave and loyal subjects. For one 
thousand years they flourished in spite of sporadic persecution, until, 
at the close of the tenth century they were the advisers of every court, 
learned in all the professions, and influential in every business of the 
age. They were confined to no particular department of industry, 
but were farmers, artisans, merchants, physicians and lawyers; and, by 
the way, were the first to apply hydraulics to irrigation. It is often said 
that they were the usurers and money-lenders of the world. Do you 
know why? They were compelled to put their wealth into money 
because Christian intolerence forbade them by law from practicing any 
profession, from owning land, and from following any calling except the 
most menial, and finally drove away from the haunts of men those who 
were not butchered as an example to the rest, a persecution instituted 
solely because they clung to their faith in one God, whose command¬ 
ments they believed they had received directly from His hands, amid 
the smoke and clouds of Sinai.” 

— Remarks upon laying the corner-stone for a Jewish Hospital, in 

Denver, Colo., Oct. 9, 1892. 


EDWARD O. WOLCOTT’S ABILITY AS A LAWYER 

“Wolcott was a good lawyer in that he never piled up a lot of useless 
matter. It was his habit in presenting his cases to pick out two or three 
strong points. He was an analyzer, and he did not waste either his time 
or the time of the Court. He selected the points, decisive of the cases 
he cited, and did not read many authorities; would argue the principal 
questions at issue, and let the rest go. Thus he avoided confusing the 
Court and made sure that every point counted. * * * He was a 

man of engaging personality; a lawyer of splendid insight; an orator of 
convincing power. His success in life was marked, but was not beyond 
his deserts. He was absolutely honest in his views, and we have had 
few public men, who were so courageous in exposing their real convictions. 
Whether in private, or public life, he thought for himself, and he was 
never swerved from a purpose by self-interest or public clamor. 

— Testimony of Justice David J. Breicer. 

HOW HE PREPARED AND DELIVERED SPEECHES 

“When Wolcott was preparing a speech, it was his habit to lock the 
door, light a cigar, and begin pacing the room just like one of the wild 
animals at the zoo. After a long time thus spent, he would begin dictat¬ 
ing between puffs. He was a good dictator, his thoughts coming smoothly 
and his grammar nearly faultless. Even, for his unwritten speeches, 
he made exhaustive preparation by careful investigation. Notes were 


772 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


made and elaborated upon, but his memory and ready wit were depended 
upon to meet the exigencies of any given occasion. When he got 
into action in the Senate on an extemporaneous speech he kept to his 
notes for a time; but as interruptions came, and he lost his temper (which 
was no trouble at all, as Senators delighted to work him up, by prodding), 
he threw his notes away or couldn’t find the place again, and just let 
himself go. It was at this period that the real speech began and he was 
generally allowed to finish, for oratory had broken loose.” 

—1 ‘Life and Character of E. 0. Wolcottf ^77, by Thos. Fulton 
Dawson. 

THE HEREAFTER 

“Only a few days before he (Hon. John Simpkins) died, we stood to¬ 
gether on the heights near Arlington overlooking the Potomac. It was 
a glorious morning in early spring; the city lay at our feet bathed in mist, 
and the swelling hills and the broad river stretched far away until they 
mingled with the horizon. He spoke of the wonderful beauty of the 
landscape and the pleasure it gave him. When I was next in his presence, 
it was as a mourner at the toucliing burial service of that beautiful 
religion which he cherished, and great banks and masses of flowers 
covered all that was left of him. And as my thoughts turned back to 
that vision of hill and river, closed to him forever, I realized that perhaps 
his eyes had already opened where no horizon limited his gaze, in pure 
ether, illumined with the ‘white radiance of eternity,’ he looked with 
unclouded vision upon fairer scenes.” 

—House of Representatives, Feb. 18, 1899, Memorial Services to Hon. 
John Simpkins, late member of the H. of Rep .—1 Life and Character 
of E. 0. Wolcott, 553-J 4 .. 


JOKE AT DELMONICO’S, N. Y. 

While dining at Delmonico’s, in New York, with some friends, a 
Colorado man, who was noted at home for his vanity, entered Delmoni¬ 
co’s, not observing Wolcott and his friends. “Watch me have some fun,” 
said Wolcott. 

He then arranged for the manager to let him (Wolcott) pay the bill, 
and tell the gentleman (the Denver, Colorado, man) that his reputation 
was such that he, the manager, felt it an honor to have him as Ids guest 
at dinner, saying: “Colonel, there is no charge. Your reputation is such 
that it has preceded you, and the house feels so flattered at having you 
dine here that it desires you to accept its hospitality!” 

The deception was not suspected, and the air assumed by the visitor 
as he left the hall was fully enjoyed by the Senator and his friends. 
Ed Wolcott, as he was familiarly called, said, “It was worth the price.” 

— Dawson's Life of Wolcott, Vol. 1 , 

BUFFALO BILL AND BILL BRYAN 

“Nebraska has produced two great men, Buffalo Bill (W. F. Cody), 
and Bill Bryan; and there is this difference between them—Buffalo Bill 
has a show, and Bill Bryan has no show.” 


“RATS” 

At a political meeting Wolcott was interrupted by a lot of rowdies, 
shouting “Rats.” The speaker paused for a moment, and waiving 
his hand to the gallery filled with colored folk, said: “Waiter, come down 
and take the Chinaman’s order!” 


LEVI WOODBURY (1789-1851), New Hampshire 


A FEARFUL THING TO TAKE HUMAN LIFE 

“Every symptom corresponds with what would be expected from death 
by starvation. The collapsed state of the abdomen, the emptiness of the 
stomach and intestines, the small size of the former, the total absence 
of fat from beneath the skin, and from every portion of the body. * * * 

It is admitted, most of these appearances may result from certain emaciat¬ 
ing diseases, such as those of the liver, of the mesentery glands, of the 
stomach, etc.; but here the liver was sound, the glands not diseased, and 
every organ performing its accustomed functions. Here, too, the prisoner 
would have been alarmed at the deadly change, had that change happened 
by a secret disease, by some species of marasmus, and not by other causes 
well known by him. Hence, no information of illness was given to 
neighbors, or to its miserable mother, no nurse, no physician, no astonish¬ 
ment by him, at its death; and hence conscience, the worm that never 
dies, goaded him into fright and resistance to legal process. Alas! had 
the miserable mother been notified of its approaching end, and emboldened 
by that maternal affection which imparts courage to the most timid 
animals, had she dared to enter the dwelling of her seducer, and the 
prison of her child, and gazed upon the living skeleton, she should not 
have known her son, reduced to such a loathsome wreck of despair, cold 
and famine! 

“It is a fearful thing to see the human soul take wing, in any shape, 
in any mood. But to see the healthy bloom of infancy fade by hunger, 
the buoyant spirit broken down by blows, the heart drooping in solitude 
and misery, and nakedness and frost joining to change the elastic step of 
youth into the tottering decrepitude of age; to see the scene closing its 
stifled groans, in a deserted garret, without a mother’s tears or a father’s 
sympathy; and to be hurried to the grave like carrion with no mourner, 
or a sigh, is too horrible for a Christian community ever to endure, 
without fixing on its author the brand of Cain. Yet this course of treat¬ 
ment not only caused the child’s death, but it originated in the most 
horrible malice. Because each treatment is consistent with nothing but 
malice; death was the natural and obvious consequence of it. What 
other consequence could have been anticipated? A person of adult 
age, with a constitution of iron, could not be expected to enjoy health, 
under diet and discipline so unusual and severe. It would require the 
aid of the invincible mind or of some o’er mastering passion or of some 
all-absorbing principle in religious or political martyrdom, to sustain 
the body at all, any great length of time, under such a mass of privations. 
But a child is not a monk, a Dervise,or a Brahmin, to undergo the penance 
of hunger, cold and the scourge, for weeks and months, with impunity. 
Of the father and his children, de.scribed by Dante, who perished in a 
dungeon by starvation, the youngest yielded first under his agonies; 
and their tyrant, like him who immured and chained to the floor the 
prisoners of Chillon, beheld the oldest and most resolute of heart against 
oppression live longest, to mock that despotic power, which, with all its 
myrmidons and wrath, is ever unable to chain the spirit. Youth is most 
bound up in the senses; it requires more frequent and nourishing diet, 
and can endure exposure and suffering less firmly, than mature age. 

“The respondent, in this case, was the father of a family, and therefore 
well knew the wants of children, and the propriety not only of ample 
food and clothing, but of warm lodging and decent cleanliness. He 
furnished these necessaries of life to his other children, and must have 
withheld them here with the full consciousness of the consequences, 


774 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


and with the felonious design to remove from him the living monument 
of his infamy. He also had abundant means to provide every necessary and 
comfort for this child, as he did for his other children. He was admonished 
of the consequences long before his brutality terminated in the death 
of his victim ;«and every person of common sense, as well as the physicians, 
must be conscious that such an end could not be otherwise than natural, 
obvious, and, indeed, inevitable, from such cruel privations. 

“ * * * rpjjg nauseating filth and vermin which appeared on the 

body, which undressed for its winding-sheet and coffin, could not have 
been unknown to him, any more than its ulcerated head; and all would 
have been prevented or remedied, had they not formed a part of the 
systematic brutality to be exercised on his innocent victim. The appear¬ 
ance on dissection, the absence of everything but the mere organs of life, 
and a fleshless skeleton, these appearances, also, without any previous 
disease, or call for medicine, or physician, though one had attended on 
the prisoner himself within a few weeks, and last, though not least, the 
missing toes and joints, attributable to no possible cause but frost and 
nakedness, and about which no medicine, surgeon, or nurse, had ever 
been employed, are all confirmations of the most hardened malice, and 
conflrmations strong enough, one would think, to convince the sternest 
infldel. 

“Go home, then, gentlemen of the jury, if you can after this evidence, 
acquit the prisoner, go home and tell the friends and the poor how they 
may be threatened, scourged, frozen and starved, and thrust into a garret 
to die, without punishment on their oppressors, in a. country boasting of 
its humanity,.its equal laws, and its impartial justice! Send home again, 
also, to his former neighborhood, the heartless wretch before you, where 
his return will carry dismay like the approach of pestilence, and encourage 
him to repeat these enormities on his other illegitimate offspring, who may 
chance to fall within his merciless power! Give to all others similarly 
situated the same humane advice and countenance! But more. Your 
verdict may secure or invade, ere long, even the hearths and altars 
where a still nearer and dearer interest exists. 

“The things of this world are rapidly passing away, and many of us 
must soon descend to the same narrow dwelling with Alfred Furnald. 
Into whose hands our tender offspring may fall, and under what desolate 
circumstances, it is not given us to foresee. But hand down, if you can, 
to future juries, sitting on the trial of a destroyer of any of your orphan 
children, a precedent, that the murder is mitigated, if that destroyer 
only prolongs their agonies to months, instead of minutes! Say, if you 
will, also, to other States and other countries, which your 'verdict may 
visit on the wings of the press, that the talk among us, concerning human¬ 
ity, civilization and Christianity, is merely to keep the promise to the 
ear; but that, for your single selves, you either fully approve the prisoner’s 
conduct, or feel greater sympathy for him than for his famished child, 
cut off at the dawn of being by the prisoner’s relentless malice, and in a 
manner the most horrid that imagination can paint! * * * 

“I know that from those recesses his emaciated frame cannot be re¬ 
animated till the resurrection of the just; but had the mantle of the 
prophet descended on me, how gladly would I hasten to breathe his dead 
bones into immediate life! Even nov\ should you meet the gaze of his 
sunken and imploring eyes, you should look on his cold skeleton hands, 
raised to the jury as his only human refuge for redress, and should you 
listen to the pleadings of his bloodless lips! 

“But go and acquit his destroyer, if you must, the departed spirit 
probably hovers over us, to learn your determination. If, hke the prisoner, 
you can still turn a hard heart and a deaf ear to its wrongs, it must re¬ 
ascend to the God of the fatherless and the forsaken, and hereafter 
obtain that justice which is now withheld! In the meantime, it may be 
well for us all to remember that we, likewise, must ascend to the dread 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


775 


tribunal of the same God; and when there meeting the deceased in 
judgment, that we must answer his accusing spirit for any dereliction of 
duty which the recording angel may register against us in the present 
transaction. And as you then may wish you had now acted, so I entreat 
you to act; and to say that the prisoner is or is not guilty of the crime 
whereof he here stands charged.” 

—In a speech for the prosecution of Amos Furnald and Abigail, his 
wife, of their child, Alfred Furnald, of five years of age, in 182 Jf. 

Woodbury graduated at Dartmouth, at the age of 20; studied law 
under Judges Reeves and Gould, at Litchfield, Conn.; commenced practice 
in Francestown, N. H., in 1812; Governor of N. H., 1823 at 34; in Congress 
in 1825 at 36; Senator same year; Secretary of Navy and Treasury, under 
Jackson; Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1845, 
tiU death, 1851, at Portsmouth, N. H. 

Says Hampton L. Carson: “He is best known for his services as a 
Senator of the United States, but his dissenting opinion in Waring v. 
Clarke, 5 Howard, 441 (1847), is marked by such extraordinary and 
powerful reasoning, in which he denies that the admiralty jurisdiction 
extends within the body of a country even upon tide waters, that it is 
matter of doubt whether his capacity as a jurist was not greater than a 
long life of public service had proved to be as a statesman.” 


MARK TWAIN 

“As Bacon made all learning his province, so Mark Twain has made 
all life and history his quarry, from the Jumping Prog to the Yankee 
at Arthur’s Court; from the inquested petrifaction that died of protracted 
exposure to the present parliament of Austria; from the Grave of Adam 
to the mysteries of the Adamless Eden known as the league of professional 
women; from Mulberry Sellers to Joan of Arc, and from Edward the 
Sixth to Puddin’ head Wilson, who wanted to kill his half of the deathless 
dog. 

Nevada is forgiven its decay because he fiashed the oddities of its 
zenith life on pages that endure. California is worth more than its gold, 
because he showed to men the heart under its swagger. He annexed the 
Sandwich Islands to the fun of the nation long before they were put under 
its fiag. Because of him the Missouri and the Mississippi go not unvexed 
to the sea, for they ripple with laughter as they recall Tom Sawyer, 
Huckleberry Finn, Poor Jirh and the Duke; Europe, Asia Minor and 
Palestine are open doors to the world, thanks to this Pilgrim’s Progress 
with his ‘Innocents Abroad.’ Purety, piety and pity shine out from 
‘Prince and Pauper’ like the eyes of a wondering deer on a torch-lighted 
night from a wooded fringe of mountain and of lake.” 

— St. Clair McKelway, Columbia, Mo., (184-5- ), at dinner given 

Samuel L. Clemens [Mark Twairi] by the Lotus Club, N. Y. City, 
Nov. 11, 1900. 



JAMES M. WOOLWORTH (1830- ), Nebraska 


THE PROFESSION OF LAW 

“The profession of law is not a craft, or a trade, or a venture. It is 
not a contrivance for the benefit of lawyers. It cannot be worthily or 
even decently practiced simply for gain. * * * Hobbes was the great¬ 

est political philosopher England ever produced. * * * Law is a 
rule of civil conduct by which organized conscience or by legislative 
command obliges its members to do or forbear a class of acts.” 

—James M. Wqolworth. 

It was the opinion of the late Charles O. Tichenor, of the Kansas City 
Bar, that Mr. Woolworth was one of the ablest lawyers in the West. 


PEOPLE OP THE NEW ENGLAND STATES 

“The Asiatic races are worn out; Delhi and Jerusalem as dead, politically, 
as Babylon; the African race sunk with Carthage and Egypt; Europe 
is growing old, if not decrepit; but who can conceal from himself—who 
that runs may not read as if written on tablets of stone by the finger of 
Deity—that this new world, whether our people be Norman or Saxon, 
Celt or Teutonic in origin, has a new theatre for new principles ? Longer 
maturing in New England, but in some measure common to the whole 
Union, and which tend to uphold rather than destroy the reign of order 
and law and justice, and which, if diffused gradually but thoroughly, 
will tend to make a great fraternity of mankind. 

“This hope rests not on loose generalities or highly sounding epithets, 
friendly to popular rights and popular power, but on solid foundations, 
on written constitutions, equal legislation, the trial by jury, habeas corpus, 
equal distribution of estates, and aU these with much more guaranteed 
as well as enforced by help of those free schools and free churches and free 
institutions before alluded to, which distinguish us so strikingly from 
any of the races and governments that have preceded us. In all this, 
sir, far from us be another thought, with which at times we have been 
reproached, that this hope, and our new mission as a people, does or 
can rest on any league of Roman violence, or on revolutionary anarchy, 
or Mohammedan conversions by the sword, but rather is it that, since 
the Mayfiower landed the first Pilgrim on our shores, the design, equally 
pervading our whole people, is believed to have been, and I hope ever 
will be, to use the sword of justice rather than of conquest, accompanied 
by her equal scales for high and low, rich and poor, and, by the aid of 
superior intelligence and morals, to harmonize liberty with law, and the 
rights and power of the people at large with public order, public security 
and a rapid progress in everything useful to humanity. Let me offer 
the following sentiment for New England: The land of free schools, 
free churches and free suffrage.” 

—Speech by Levi Woodbury at 'meeting of the New England Society, 

Washington, D. C., 184b. 



GEORGE WYTHE (1726-1806), Virginia 


DUTY OF A JUDGE 

“Among all the advantages which have arisen to mankind, from the 
study of letters, and the universal diffusion of knowledge, there is none 
of more importance than the tendency they have had to produce dis¬ 
cussions upon the respective rights of the sovereign and the subject; 
and upon the powers which the different branches of government may 
exercise. For, by this means, tyranny has been sapped, the depart¬ 
ments kept within their own spheres, the citizens protected, and general 
liberty promoted. But this beneficial result attains to higher perfection, 
when those who hold the purse and the sword differing as to the powers 
which each may exercise, the tribunals who hold neither are called upon 
to declare the law impartially between them. For thus the pretensions 
of each party are fairly examined, their respective powers ascertained, and 
the boundaries of authority peaceably estabhshed. Under these impres¬ 
sions I approach the question which has been submitted to us; and, al¬ 
though it was said the other day by one of the judges, that, imitating that 
great and good man. Lord Hale, he would sooner quit the bench than 
detrimine it, I feel no alarm; but will meet the crisis as I ought; and in 
the language of my oath of office, will decide it, according to the best of 
my skill and judgment. 

“I have heard of an English Chancellor who said, and it was nobly 
said, that it was his duty to protect the rights of the subject against the 
encroachments of the crown; and that he would do it, at every hazard. 
But if it was his duty to protect a solitary individual against the rapacity 
of the sovereign, surely it is equally mine to protect one branch of the 
legislature and, consequently, the whole community, against the usurpa¬ 
tions of the other; and, whenever the proper occasion occurs, I shall 
feel the duty and fearlessly perform it. Whenever traitors shall be 
fairly convicted, by the verdict of their peers before the competent 
tribunal; if one branch of the legislature, without the concurrence of the 
other, shall attempt to rescue the offenders from the sentence of the law, 

I shall not hesitate, sitting in this place, to say to the general court. 
Fiat jiistitia mat coelum (Let justice be done, though the heavens fall); 
and, to the usurping branch of the legislature, ‘you attempt worse than 
a vain thing; for, although you cannot succeed, you set an example 
which may convulse society to its center.’ Nay more, if the whole legis¬ 
lature, an event to be deprecated, should attempt to overleap the bounds 
prescribed to them by the people, I, in administering the public justice 
of the country, will meet the united powers at my seat in this tribunal, ^ 
and, pointing to the constitution, will say to them, ‘here is the limit of 
your authority; and hither you go, but no further.’ ” 

— WythFs opinion in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, 1782. 

He had as pupils, Thos. Jefferson, James Monroe, John Marshall, 
St. George Tucker, Spencer Roane, Archibald Stuart, John Wickham, 
John Brown (of Ky.), Jas. Breckenridge, John Coalter, Littleton Waller 
Tazewell, Buckner Thurston, Wm. Munford, Jas. Innis, Geo. Nicholas, 
and Henry Clay. Jefferson said of Wythe: “No man ever left behind 
him 4 character more venerated than George Wythe;” and Lord Brougham 
of the speech from which the above extract is taken, “The greatest re¬ 
finement of which any state or circumstances has ever given rise or to 
which any age has even given birth.” 


778 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


JEFFERSON’S TRIBUTE 

“Among his rivals at the bar the most formidable was Edmund 
Pendleton, who resembled Lord Mansfield in the character of his intellect, 
and who from his 12th year had never lost a day from the eager pursuit 
of his profession. He had the advantage of Wythe in personal appear¬ 
ance, which was singularly handsome, in his voice which was clear and 
silver-toned and his manners were charming and fascinating. But as 
actors on the stage, Pendleton was bold and aggressive. Then, Pendleton 
was far from possessing the information of Wythe, and he was rather a 
great advocate than a deep lawyer. Nevertheless, in debate, while Wythe 
was more solidly argumentative, Pendleton was more subtle and capti¬ 
vating; and in their frequent contests at the bar the advantage, in the 
popular judgment, lay as a rule with Pendleton. Wythe generally 
bore these apparent defeats with reserve and equanimity, but he lacked 
neither quickness of parts nor colloquial talents; and sometimes when 
aroused by some improper remark, he would swiftly retort with terrible 
severity. A story is told of a remark made by him to Lord Dunmore, 
which illustrates his wit and talent for biting sarcasm. Wythe and Robert 
Carter Nicholas appeared for one side, before Lord Dunmore who presided 
as Chief-Justice, and Mr. Pendleton for the other. Wythe demanded 
an immediate trial, while Pendleton desired a continuance, as Mr. Mason, 
his colleague, was absent and there were two counsel on the other side. 
Lord Dunmore did not like Wythe, and, forgetting the dignity of his 
position, had the indelicacy to say: ‘Go on^Mr. Pendleton, for you will 
be a match for both of them.’ ‘With your Lordship’s assistance,’ retorted 
Wythe, bowing with mock politeness.”— 1 Great American Lawyers, 73-Jt. 

WYTHE AS A STATESMAN 

“As a statesman Wythe was identified with the most advanced views 
as to the relations of the colonies with Great Britain, and both defended 
and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was the author of the 
beautiful State seal of Virginia, and one of the chief causes of the adop¬ 
tion of the Federal Constitution by Virginia; as a teacher, he was the 
first law professor in the U. S., and set the example of moot courts, and 
moot legislatures. And as a lawyer and judge, he was profound and abso¬ 
lutely just, had a great part in shaping the first laws of the infant common¬ 
wealth, was the first to lay down the principle of the overruling power of 
the judiciary, and dared to afford the example, as he did in the British 
debt cases, of a judge utterly fearless of popular influence.” 

—President Tyler, of William and Mary College; 1 Great American 
Lawyers, 89-90. 

HIS NOTED LAW PUPIL 

Jefferson read law five years with Wythe, beginning in 1762, at Williams¬ 
burg. Probably preferred Wythe as a teacher over Peyton Randolph 
and John Randolph, son of his great uncle. Sir John Randolph, also 
living at Williamsburg, and were eminent lawyers and his attached 
friends. 

HENRY CLAY’S TRIBUTE 

“Mr. Wythe’s personal appearance and his personal habits were plain, 
simple and unostentatious. His countenance was full of blandness and 
benevolence, and I think he made, in his salutations of others, the most 
graceful bow that I have ever witnessed. A little bent by age, he generally 
wore a gray coating. And when walking carried a cane. Even at this 
inoment, after the lapse of more than half a century since I last saw 
him, his image is distinctly engraved on my mind.” 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


779 


LEARNED AND PEDANTIC 

“Wythe, above all early statesmen, was deeply learned in the law; 
had traced all its doctrines to their fountain-heads, delighted in the year¬ 
book, from doomsday down; had Granville, Bracton and Fleta bound in 
collects; had all the British Statutes at full length, and was writing 
elaborate decisions every day, in which to the amazement of county 
court lawyers, Horace and Anlus Gellius were sometimes quoted as 
authorities. He carried his love of antiquity rather too far, for he fre¬ 
quently subjected himself to the charge of pedantry; and his admiration 
of the gigantic writers of Queen Elizabeth’s reign had unfortunately 
betrayed him into an imitation of their quaintness. * * * Yet, he 

was a man of great capacity, powerful in argument, elegantly keen and 
sarcastic in repartee, long the rival of Mr. Pendleton at the bar, whom he 
equaled as a common lawyer and greatly surpassed as a civilian. 
* * * No man was ever more entirely destitute of art. * * * 

This simplicity and integrity of character sometimes exposed him to 
the arts and sneers of the less scrupulous. * * * But he was not only 

pure, but above all suspicion.” 

— Wirfs Sketches of the Life of Patrick Henry, also Warren s Hist, 
of Am. Bar, 

JOHN RANDOLPH’S ESTIMATE 

“He lived in the world without being of the world; that he was a mere 
incarnation of justice, that his judgments were all as between A and B; 
for he knew nobody; but went into court, as Astraca was supposed to 
come down from heaven, exempt from all human bias.”— Warren’s Hist. 
Am. Bar, 34-5. 

ANDREW J. MONTAGUE ON WYTHE 

“George Wythe, the first chancellor of Virginia, and the first judge 
who ever declared an act of the Legislature null and void, because con¬ 
trary to the Constitution; and as a chancellor easily ranking with Kent.” 
— Hon. Andrew J. Montague, Governor of Virginia, in an address at 
Washington, D. C., Apr. IS, 1902, on '^ Jefferson as a Citizen of the 
Commonwealth of Virginia.” 

JEFFERSON’S ‘NOTES ON VIRGINIA’ SENT WYTHE 

Jefferson in sending Wythe a copy of his “Notes on Virginia,” from 
Paris, Aug. 13, 1786, says: “Your wishes, which are laws to me, will 
justify my destining a copy for you, otherwise I should as soon have 
thought of sending you a horn-book; for there is no truth in it which is 
not familiar to you, and its errors I should hardly have proposed to treat 
you with.”— See vol. 1, pp. 166 to 170, Jefferson’s Works in 20 vols. 


BARRY YELVERTON, lordavonmore (1736-1805), Ireland 


A TEDIOUS SERMON 

“Well, my lord, how did you like the sermon,” said a tedious preacher 
to Yelverton, after the service. 

“Oh! most wonderfully,” replied Yelverton. “It was like the peace of 
God: it passed all understanding, and, like his mercy, I thought it would 
have endured forever.” 

He was an Irish lawyer, and afterwards judge; educated at Trinity 
College, Dubhn; Attorney-General, 1782; elevated to bench, 1783; created 
Baron Avonmore, 1795, and in 1800 Viscount. Of insignificant appearance, 
remarkably eloquent, as a judge was inclined to take the view of an 
advocate. Was familiar with the models of antiquity and his mind 
was imbued with the spirit of the orators of Greece and Rome. He was 
a fit precursor of Curran, his dearest friend, and the beloved of the good 
and great of Ireland. He was equally distinguished as lawyer, orator and 
statesman. 


DESCRIPTION OF CURRAN BY CHAS. PHILLIPS 

“When I was called to the bar Curran was on the bench; and, not 
only bagless, but briefless, I was one day taking the idle round of the hall 
of the Pour Courts, when a common friend told me he was commissioned 
by the Master of the Rolls to invite me to dinner that day at the Priory, 
a little country villa about four miles from Dublin, Those who recollect 
their first introduction to a really great man may easily comprehend 
my delight and my consternation. * * * Never shall I forget my 

sensations when I caught my first glimpse of the little man through the 
vista of his avenue. * * * There he was—his face almost parallel 

with the horizon—his under lip protruded and the impatient step and 
the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye 
glanced from his guest to his watch and from his watch reproachfully to 
his dining-room. * * * The moment he perceived me he took me 

by the hand, said he would not have anyone introduce me, and with a 
manner which I often thought was charmed, at once banished every 
apprehension and completely familiarized me at the Priory. I had 
often seen Curran—often heard of him—often read him, but no man ever 
knew anything about him who did not see him at his own table with the 
few whom he selected. He was a little convivial deity. He soared in 
every region and was at home in all; he touched everything and seemed 
as if he had created it; he mastered the human heart with the same ease 
he did his violin. You wept, and you laughed, and you wondered; 
and the wonderful creature who made j^ou do all at will never let it 
appear that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, if you 
chose, to become your auditor.” 

—From ^Life of Cnrranf hy his son, 381-2. 



SIR PHILIP YORKE, lord hardwicke (1690-1764), 

England 

WAR 

“It is a self-evident proposition that being educated and trained to 
arms, must give a distaste for all civil occupations. Amongst the common 
people it introduces a love of idleness, of sports, and at last, of plunder.” 

—Speech in the House of Lords, 1756. 

Cromwell; “Cromwell gave more frequent proof of an uncommon 
penetration into futurity than any man living or dead .”—Lord Hardwicke. 

Woman’s Virtue: “The virtue of a woman does not consist merely 
in her chastity.”— 3 atk. 339. 

LORD MANSFIELD’S ESTIMATE 

“If you wish to employ your abilities in writing the life of a truly 
great and wonderful man in our profession, take the life of Lord Hardwicke 
for your object; he was, indeed, a wonderful character, he became Chief 
Justice of England, and Chancellor, from his own abilities and virtues.” 

LORD JOHN CAMPBELL’S OPINION 

“Hardwicke is universally and deservedly considered the most con¬ 
summate judge who ever sat in the Court of Chancery.” 

LORD ELDON’S CHARACTERIZATION 

“Lord Hardwicke was one of the greatest lawyers who ever sat in 
Westminster Hall. He was a great man both as a common lawyer and 
a judge in equity.”— 2 ^Twiss^ Life of Eldon,’ JtlJf. 

LEGALLY WISE 

“It would be difficult to find in any age or nation, as the production 
of a single mind, a more various or comprehensive body of legal wisdom 
than is contained in the reports of Atkyns and Vesey (Hardwicke’s Deci¬ 
sions).”— 3 'Life of Hardwicke,’ by Harris, from 'Law Mag.’, 88. 

E. P. WHIPPLE, “SPIDER OF THE LAW” 

“Henry Fox, in a hot attack on Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who was 
supposed to have no desire to reform the many abuses of his office, 
exclaimed: ‘Touch but a cobweb in Westminster Hall, and the old spider 
of the law is upon you, with all his vermin at his heels’.”— 'Literature and 
Life,’ 241 , by E. P. Whipple. 

WISDOM 

“No man is wise, but you take into consideration the weakness of 
another, a maxim more eminently true of political wisdom, which con¬ 
sists very often only in discovering designs which never could be known 
but by the folly or treachery of those to whom they are intrusted.” 

—1 Life of Lord Hardwicke, 503. 


782 


GREAT SAYINGS BY GREAT LAWYERS 


INNOVATION 

“The wantonness of innovation is a dangerous disease of the mind; 
in a private station it prompts men to be always discontented with what 
they find, and to lose the enjoyment of good, in search of something better.” 

— Idem, Jt.90. 

LIBERTY OP THE PRESS 

“If the liberty of the press consists in defamation, it were much better 
we were without such liberty. The words ‘the liberty of the press,’ 
are improperly used to express a right, which is peculiar to the press, of 
publishing to the world any defamatory matter to the prejudice of supe¬ 
rior, inferior or equal. Before the discovery of printing, very strong 
statutes were still in force, and none of them has since been repealed. 
Hence from the expression, the liberty of the press, it can never be under¬ 
stood any liberty which the press acquired, and which was unknown 
before the discovery of printing.”— Idem, ^30-1. 

ANCIENT LANGUAGES 

“Without a competent skill in the ancient languages, you will want 
the inexpressible pleasure and advantage, that can only be drawn from 
those immortal patterns of nervous, beautiful writing, and virtuous 
action, which Greece and Rome have left us.”—1 'Life of Hardivickef 392 

TRAVELING 

“One fundamental error is traveling too early. The mind of a young 
man wants to be fitted and prepared for this kind of cultivation; and until 
it is properly opened by study and learning, he will want light to see and 
observe, as well as knowledge to apply the facts and occurrences met with 
in foreign countries.”—1 'Life of Lord Ilardwickfi,' 391^. 

ANCESTORS AND POSTERITY 

“The merit of ancestors in a former age can never atone for the 
degeneracy of their posterity in the present.”— Idem, 396. 


GENERAL INDEX 









GENERAL INDEX 


BAFT the Biniiacle,” 458. 
Abbot, Charles (Lord Ten- 
derden), 1, 257. 

Abbott, Austin, 533. 

Abbott, Lyman, 133, 241, 287, 
323, 411, 427, 428, 546, 549, 
550, 558, 565, 580. 

Abinger, Lord (Jas. Scarlett), 2, 3, 
157, 583, 618, 620, 696. 
Accident, 187. 

Acroyd, V. Smithson, 257. 
Acquisitiveness, 677. 

“Acres of Diamonds,” 185. 

Acton, Lord (John E. E. Dal- 
berg), 101, 102. 

Adams, Chas. Francis, 209. 
Adams, Chas. Francis, Jr., 17. 
Adams, Henry, 18, 589. 

Adams, John, 3, 4, 8, 391. 

Adams, Jno. Quincy, 9, 11, 12, 15, 
171, 172. 

Adams, SamJ, 3, 4. 

Adams, Thomas, 7. 

Admiralty, 507. 

Adultery, 43, 230. 

Adversity, 3. 

Advocate, 109, 166. 

Aesop, 32. 

Affections, 264, 470. 

Africa, 10^ 

Aged, the, 27, 471. 

“Age of Reason,” 262. 

Agitation, 534. 

Agnostic, 376. 

Agriculture, 62, 236, 348, 745. 
Aked, Dr. C. F., 421. 

Albany Law Journal, 43, 44. 
Aldrich v. Wright, 239. 
Alexander, the great, 194. 

Alexis, Duke of, 121. 

Allen, Jno. M., 531. 

Altar—the family, 200. 

Ambition, 471, 510. 

America, 182, 394, 572, 766. 
“American Law,” by T. Walker, 
736. 

Ames, Fisher, 7, 19, 194, 232, 234. 
Amiens Curiae, 160. 

Analytical Methods, 682. 
Ancestors, 489. 

Ancients, 744. 

Anderson, Jno. W., 277. 
Anglo-Saxons, 367. 

Angels—“Wouldn’t drag them 
down,” 747; subpoena, the, 471. 
Anger, 363. 

Anti-Unionist, 543. 

Anthony, Col. D. K., 25. 


Anthony, 53, 204. 

Appleton, John, 21. 

Apothems, 27. 

Appomatox, 184. 

Apostrophe to Water, 677. 
“Apprehend him,” 499. 

Atheism, 27. 

Atherton, Gertrude, 317. 
Arbitration, 608. 

Architecture, 558. 

“Argue cases whether you win or 
not,” 7. 

Aristides, 41. 

Aristotle, 166, 690. 

Arms, Call to, 332. 

Art, 188, 415, 535, 549. 

Arthur, Chester A., 183. 

Ass, 189, 679. 

Ashburton, Lord (John Dunning), 
249. 

Attorney-General, 107. 
“Attornevs created out of noth¬ 
ing,” 216. 

Atwood, John H., 25. 

Austin, John, 49, 66. 

Asquith, Herbert H., 167. 
Authority, 204. 

Autonomy of States, 353. 
Authors, 108, 330, 449. 

Avery, Rev. E. K., 474. 
Avonmore, Lord (Barry Yelver- 
ton), 67, 307, 314. 

B abcock, Gen’l, defended by 
Jno. K. Porter, 549. 
Baboon’s grimaces, 203. 
Bacon, Francis, (Lord Verulam, 
Viscount St. Albans), 22, 27, 
32, 179, 180, 360, 665, 763. 
Bailee, Barber not liable as, 69. 
Baillie, Captain, Case (ErsMne), 
258. 

Baldwin’s “Flush Times,” etc., 
552, 553. 

Baldwin, Roger Sherman, 33. 
Baldwin, Simeon E., 35. 

Balfour, Arthur, 167. 

Ball, R. E., 381. 

Ballentine, Sergeant, 164. 
Banbury Peerage case, 631. 
Bancroft, Frederick, 631. 
Bancroft, George, 35, 101, 458, 
759. 

Bar, the, 204, 241, 596, 607, 614, 
616, 619, 704; of Penna., 50. 
Bar, the—An index of virtue, 
353; aristocracy of brains, 614. 



78G 


GENERAL INDEX 


Bar, Pinkney head of till death, 
540. 

Barber, not liable as bailee, 69. 

Barre, Colonel, 249. 

Barristers and Solicitors, 361. 

Bartlett, Ichabod, 37, 38. 

Bartlett, Sidney, 145, 339. 

Bashfulness, 27. 

Basic Principles of Government, 
223 

Bass V. C. B. & Q. Ry. Co., 86. 

Bay, W. V. N., 54. 

Bayard, Thomas F., 41, 45. 

Beach, William A., 43. 

Beach, Evarts & Porter, compar¬ 
ed 549. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 372, 580, 
657. 

Bench, good, how obtained, 415. 

Benjamin, Judah P., 76, 459. 

Benton, Thomas H., 51. 

Bentham, Jeremy, 49, 67,108, 721. 

Bentwick, Norman, 694. 

Bergen, James J., 517. 

Betwixt “Hell” and “Hill,” 79. 

Beveridge, Albert J., 40, 331, 464. 

Bible, 27, 44, 76, 100, 112, 162, 
211, 216, 235, 236, 241, 309, 
546, 580, 752. 

Bigelow, John, 359, 531, 641. 

Bigotry, 498. 

Binney, Horace, 56. 

Biography, should be read, 37, 
556, 636. 

Birth-place, the selection of, 142; 
humble, 752. 

Bishop, Joel P., 59. 

Black, Crawford, defended, 733. 

Black, Jeremiah S., 123, 282, 296, 
313, 450, 601. 

Blackburn, Justice Colin, 421. 

Black Crook, not a dramatic 
composition, 220. 

Blackstone, William, 65, 67, 74, 
238, 314, 391, 398, 412. 

Blaine, James G., 183, 278, 288, 
292, 371, 650. 

Blatchford, Samuel, 633. 

Bleckley, Logan E., 68. 

Blennerhasset’s Journal, 469. 

Boasting, 587. 

Bohngbroke, Viscount, (Henry 
St. John), 173. 

Book-case (Bradley), 76. 

Book-keeper, though not good 
accountant—could “keep 
books,” 464. 

Books, learning outside of, 554; 
test of a, 585-27; three, 44; 74, 
147, 156, 160, 362, 382. 


Borah, William E., 70, 219. 
Borrowers, all are, 553. 

Botany, 22. 

Boston, 474. 

Boudinot, Elias, 7. 

Boulevards and parks, 85. 

Bout well, George S., 429. 

Brady, James T., 50, 55, 77, 148, 
451, 551. 

Brady, Thomas J., 77. 

Bradish, Luther, 72. 

Bradley, Joseph P., 73, 122, 516. 
Bragging, 27, 311. 

Brains of the Confederacy, 45. 
Bramwell, Baron (George William 
Wilshire), 81. 

Brandeis, Louis D., 82, 766. 
Breach of promise, 264. 

Breeches, Bradley cut into shreds, 
76. 

Breckenridge, W. C. P., 83. 
Breese, Sidney, 86, 438. 

Brevity, 106. 

Brewer, David J., 59, 87. 
Brewster, Benjamin H., 50, 88. 
Brice, Calvin, 739. 

Briefs, Carpenter’s bought by 
Congress, 127. 

“Bring on the next,” 161. 

Brinkley Divorce Case, 43. 
Britain, 8. 

British Debts Case, 329. 
Broadhead, James O., 20, 90. 
Brown, David Paul, 94. 

Brown, Edward Osgood, 46. 
Brown, Irving, 68, 185, 760. 
Brown, John, 740. 

Brown, Samuel Gilman, 163. 
Brown, William G., 252. 

Brutus, 53. 

Buchanan, James, 211, 631. 
Buckle, Henry T., 100, 364. 

Bull, father had (Jos. H. Choate), 
143. 

Buller, Judge, Erskine’s Tilt with, 
265. 

Bullock, “Choose ye one,” 142. 
Bullwinkle, B. B., 679. 

Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, 44. 
Bryan, William J., 98. 

Bryce, James, 99, 152, 411, 601. 
Burgess, Tristam, 105, 520. 
Burke, Edmund, 81, 100, 211, 
157, 259, 419, 587, 537, 639, 
783. 

“Burke, Tim,” 536. 

Burnett, Bishop Gilbert, 347. 
Burns, Robert, 22, 140, 199. 

Burr, Aaron, 100, 106, 467. 

Burr, Theodosia, 108. 


GENERAL INDEX 


787 


Busche, Charles Kendal, 109. 
Business, starting in, 185; regula¬ 
tion of, 726. 

Butler’s, Joseph, Analogy, 655. 
Butler, Benjamin F., Ill, 269, 
340, 648. 

Butler, William Allen, 113, 637. 
Buy not what you do not want, 
390. 

By-Laws, 161. 

Byron, Lord, 204, 746. 

C AB, Call me a “cab,” 145. 
Caesar, Julius, 53. 

Cahn, Albert, Remarks over 
his grave, 654. 

Cairns, Lord, 100, 166. 

Calhoun, Jno. C., 54, 116, 172, 
299, 413. 

California, 634. 

Call, Wm., 258. 

Calumny, 225. 

Camden, Lord (Chas, Pratt), 
117, 118, 517. 

Cameron, Simon, 672. 

Campbell, Jas. V., 187. 

Campbell, Jno., 32, 120, 221. 
Campbell, Lord John, 1, 93, 120, 
347. 

Campbell, Jno. A., 335. 

Capital and Labor, 727. 

Carlyle, Thos., 140, 383, 500. 
Caroline, Queen, 40, 91. 
Carpenter, Matt. H., 121, 126, 
158, 216. 

Carr, Clark E., 343. 

Carr, Disney, 764. 

Carson, Hampton L., 128, 668. 
Carter, James C., 81, 130, 321, 
347, 509. 514. 

Carter, Orrin C., 247. 

Cases, adjudged, 464. 

Cassaday, Jno. Boliver, 122. 
Catholic Church, 122. 

Catholic, religion, 514; Catholic 
claims, 122, 543. 

Catron, John, 133. 

Cecil, Thomas, 180. 

Censure, 304. 

Chamberlin, Frank, 634. 
Chamberlin, Joseph, 320. 

Change, 28. 

Chapman, Lucretia, ease, 97. 
Charitable uses, 56. 

Charity, 7.54. 

Charwood, Lord, 135. 

Chase, Dudley, 136. 

Chase, F. H., Life of Lemuel 
Shaw, 644. 

Chase, Samuel, 252. 


Chase, S. P., 134, 135, 212, 440. 

Chatham, Lord (Wm. Pitt, the 
Elder), 181. 

Cheerful, 28. 

Chelmsford, Lord (Thesiger, 
Frederick), 458. 

Children, 4. 

Childs, education, 273, 274. 

Chisholm v. Georgia, 385. 

Christianity, 28, 637. 

Christianity, influence of, 267, 
563, 566. 

Christ’s divinity, 613. 

Christ’s influence on architecture, 
etc., 558. 

Chittenden, L. E., 196, 432, 659. 

Choate, Jos. H., 131, 137, 275, 
721 739. 

Choate, Rufus, 12, 125, 126, 137, 
138, 139, 148, 158, 183, 188, 
217, 231, 234, 270, 525, 539, 
641, 642, 647, 706, 788. 

Chorister, 1. 

Church, 89, 295. 

Churchill, Randolph, 165. 

Cicero, 95, 157, 166, 199, 394, 
398, 690. 

Cincinatus, 63. 

City’s right to control expendi- 
tmes, 186. 

Citizens, for adopting U. S. 
Constitution, 701. 

Civilization, 535. 

Civilization—in England, 100, 
166, 454. 

Claflin V. Houseman, 75. 

Clare, Lord (John Fitzgibbon), 
205, 283. 

Clarendon, Lord (Edward Hyde), 
22, 28. 

Clark, Champ, 568, 700. 

Classics, 145, 619. 

Classical dictionary, studied, 552. 

Clay, Henry, 37, 116, 171, 331, 
741. 

Clayton, John M., 172; Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty, 242. 

Cleanliness, 28. 

Clemenceau, M., 417. 

Clemmer, Mary, 664. 

Cleveland, Newcomb, 126. 

Client, 162. 

Clifford, Nathan, 239. 

Clinton, George, 107. 

Clinton, Henry L., 78, 173, 512. 

Clothes, 178. 

Cocki’an, Bourke, 174. 

Code, 81. 

Code pleading, 182. 

Coins, two jingle, 108. 


788 


GENERAL INDEX 


Coke, Sir Edward, 15, 179, 360, 
692. 

Coleridge, Lord, on Chas. Russell, 
602; on Win. Follett, 285. 

Colleges, 35, 753. 

Colonies, against them, 766. 

Columbia, U. S. of, 396. 

Columbia, wronged, 572. 

Columbus, Christopher, 53. 

“Come to the point,” 485. 

Commissioner—poor ought to 
have it as would make a poor 
one, 674. 

Commit fine passages, 226. 

Common carrier, by Ramsey, 
561. 

Common law, 242, 559, 562, 637, 
763. 

Common-place book, 581. 

Common school house, 551. 

Common sense, rare, 768. 

Commonwealth v. Aves, 648. 

Commonwealth v. Mosler, 297. 

Commonwealth of Pa. v. Stauffer, 
428. 

Companionship, 28. 

Completion, 725. 

Compromise, 106, 158, 331. 

Confidence, 174, 226. 

Congress, contest for seat in, 551. 

Conkling, Roscoe, 147, 152, 183, 
408, 425, 588. 

Connecticut, 33. 

Conscience, 456, 512. 

Conscience, 56. 

Conservatism, 613. 

Constitution, 630, 671, 701, and 
By Laws, 15, 59, 107, 140, 161, 
177, 221, 252, 315, 327, 452, 
483, 630, 671, 680, 706. 

Contempt of Court, 43, 143, for 
others, 84, 363. 

Contest of Congressional seat, 

551. 

Contingent fee, Evarts definition, 
521. 

Contract, impairing obligation of, 
683. 

Convict thanked Clergyman, 272. 

Conversation, 362. 

Conwell, Russell H., 185. 

Cooley, Thos. M., 186. 

Coolidge, Calvin, 188. 

Cooper Institute; Lincoln’s speech 
in, 437. 

Cordelia, 96. 

Corn, the Royal, 735. 

Cornish Plunderer, 337. 

Corporations, 178. 

Corporation, dissolution of, 60. 


Corwin, Thos., 189, 392. 

Cox, Jacob D., 34. 

Cox, S. C., 122. 

Cowley, 22. 

Coudert, Frederic R., 400, 511, 
698. 

Court’s absolutism, 35, comes 
home in its effects, 459. 
“Court is with you,” 260. 

Court “sits,” 545, master of 
Court room, 125. 

Crary, Isaac, M. 191, 194. 

Crazy Congress, 578. 

Credit and confidence built up 
West, 553. 

Creed, 369, 546. 

Criminal conversation, 264. 
Criminal law reform, 582, 583. 
Criminal has right to defense, 
36, 120, 581. 

Criminal, pity for, 312. 

Criticism, 304. 

Crittenden, John J., 196. 

Croker, Richard, 141. 
Cross-examiner, 72, 137, 156, 162, 
167, 175, 218, 602, 619, 679. 
Cuckold, 109, 657. 

Cudahy Case, 379. 

Cunning, 28. 

Curios, 108. 

Curtis, Benj. R., dissent in Dred 
Scott Case, 206, 703; tribute to 
Taney, 112, 703. 

Curtis, Geo. W., 183. 

Curtis, Geo. Ticknor, 211, 642. 
Curtius, 41. 

Curran, John P., 100, 109, 198, 
203, 314, 712, 714, 529. 
Currency question, 654. 

Curzon, Lord, 438. 

Cushing, Caleb, 212, 340. 
Cutting, Jonas, 216. 

D agger, 608. 

Dallas, Geo. M., 89. 

Daly, Chas. P., 255, 507. 

“D-d fool,” 660. 

Damages, 681. 

Dana, Richard Henry, 217. 

Dana, Charles A., 661. 

Dancing, 537. 

Dane, Nathan, 151. 

Danger, 54. 

Daniel, Jno. W., 26, 218. 

Darling y. Westmoreland, 240. 
Darrow,’Clarence, 219. 
Dartmouth College Case, 385, 
474. 

Dartmouth College, 669. 

Darwin, Charles, 36. 



GENERAL INDEX 


789 


Davis, Jefferson, 212, 666. 

Davis, Thos., 199. 

Dayton, Wm. L., 73. 

Deady, Matthew, P., 220. 

Deaf, Attorney, 123. 

Dean, Oliver H., 222, 380. 

Dearborn, T. G., 656. 

Death, 28, 183; influence after, 
744; a view of, 410, 531. 

Death does not end all, 550; 
rehef to sufferer, 582. 

Debater, 402. 

Debt, imprisoned for, 358. 

Debt, 311. 

Debtors, 589. 

Decision, 668; all must acquiesce 
in Judge’s, 372; Jessel, quick 
in, 392; recall of, 593; why 
weighty, 484. 

De Constant, Estournelles, 525. 

Deeds, 208. 

Deep valleys and smooth 
meadows, 121. 

Defendant presumed to be in¬ 
nocent, Mason, 475. 

Defending bad cause, 4, 36, 175, 
251, 352. 

Defense, criminal entitled to, 5, 
36, 81, 120. 

Delaware, 365. 

Deliberation, 339. 

Delmas, D. M., 224. 

Demagogue, 500. 

Democracy, 20, 354, 367, 586, 
678, 731. 

Democrat, 98, 494, 591. 

“Democratic party like a man 
riding backwards,” 494. 

Demosthenes, 156, 497. 

Denman, Thos., 91, 93, 225. 

Dennie, Joseph, 470. 

Depew, Chauncey M., 110, 227, 
392, 425, 443, 445, 449, 739. 

Departed, the, 150. 

Despondency, 607. 

De Quincy, Thos., 159. 

Desire, 342. 

Destiny, what decides, 413. 

Determination, 477. 

Destroyer of home, 43. 

Devil, 106. 

Dexter, Wirt, 229. 

Dexter, Samuel, 230, 231, 232; 
tilt with Judge Davis, 20, 233. 

Dialogue of the Common Laws, 
49. 

Diberio v. Harris, 69. 

Dickerson, E. N., 659. 

Dickens, Charles, 370. 


Dickinson, Daniel S., 77, 236, 
348. 

Diction, a suggestive, 161. 
Dictionary studied by J. J. 

Ingalls, 365. 

Difficulties, 94. 

Dignity, 204. 

Dillon,. Jno. F., 71, 238, 485, 486. 
Dilke, Charles, 165. 

Discretion, 28, 117, 362. . 
Dispatch, 28. 

Disraeli, (Earl of Beaconsfield) 
167, 499. 

Dissenting opinion, 60. 

Disunion foreseen, 534, 748. 

Dix, John A., 302. 

Do things yourself, 390. 

Doe, Charles, 239. 

Dog, consultation with, 204; 
legal status of, 21; eulogized 
by Geo. G. Vest, 731. 

Dolliver, Jonathan P., 344. 
Domicil, 694. 

Donkey, 262; lonely without 273. 
Doubt, 29, 646. 

Douglass, Frederick, 432. 
Douglass, Judge, a plea for, 25. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 11, 54,85, 
219, 242, 245, 433, 437. 
Drowning man’s rights at sea, 97. 
Drunkenness, 29, 79. 

Dryden, John, 2. 

Duces tecum, 467. 

Duer, John, 399. 

Duluth, speech on, 405. 

Dunning, John (Lord Ashbur¬ 
ton), 249, 287, 456. 

Durham, E. R., 380. 

Duty, 29. 

Dynkersock, 695. 

E at, “Never eat too little,” 390. 
Economy, 29. 

Edgerley, Jas. A., 79. 
Edmunds, Geo. F., 122, 126. 
Education, 4, 117, 293, 529, 622, 
672, 754. 

Egotism, 121, 539. 

Eldon, Lord (John Scott), 2, 120, 
257, 469, 547, 694. 

Elections, 483. 

Ellenborough, Lord (Edward 
Law), 2, 66, 259, 759. 
Ellsworth, Oliver, 251. 

Eloquence, 19, 556, 743, 767. 
Embargo Case, 232. 
Emancipation, 183, 209. 
Emerson, R. W., 139, 182, 370. 
Emery, Jas. W., 39. 

Eminent Domain, 297. 


790 


GENERAL INDEX 


Emmet, Robt., 344. 

Emmet, Thos. A., 254, 256. 
Employer’s Liability Act, 727. 
Enemy, trading with, 694. 
Energy, 477, 688. 

England, 4, 100, 117, 127, 415, 
647. 

English Reports, 127. 
Engravings of Lawyers, 68. 

Envy, 29. 

Epigram, 259. 

Epileptic, defense of, for murder, 
622. 

Epitaph, 123, 338, 625, 633, 669, 
675. 

Equity, 6, 87, 392, 400, 625. 
Error, 204. 

ErsMne, Lord Thomas, 40, 166, 
183, 199, 262, 271. 
“Established Church,” Thurlow, 
704. 

Eurpides, 2. 

Europe, 274, 563. 

European light, 563. 

Ethics, forensic, 580. 

Evarts, Wm. M., 44, 56, 139, 148, 
212, 272, 274, 275, 509, 514, 
549, 647, 721, 732. 

Evidence, 43, 87, 240, 262, 618, 
699. 

Ewing, Thomas, 190, 276, 277, 
576. 

Examination of witness, 619. 
Excess, an apology for, 263; of 
jurisdiction, 23, 29. 

Excuses, 166. 

Executive power, 208. 

Executor, 37. 

Exparte McArdle, 125. 

Expense, 29. 

Expert, 85, 682. 

F ace, beautiful, 29. 

Fact, facts can’t be repealed, 
680; affidavits not, 273; 
“what are the,” 55. 

Faith, 161. 

Falstaff, Jack, 194. 

Fame, 29, 35, 88, 97, 308, 576, 
616. 

Family Altar, 200. 

Farewell, “lawyer’s to his muse,” 
65. 

Farming, 62, 236, 398, 745. 

Fate, 332. 

Father, J. H. Choate’s letter to, 
145. 

Father’s letter to his son, 22. 
Favors, 588. 

Fawcett, Edgar, 370. 


Fear, 389, 390. 

Feast, 362. 

Feathers, torn from pen, 255. 
Federal and State power, 404. 
Federalist, 139. 

Fee, Ewing’s first, 276; Jas. T. 
Brady’s, 75; Choate’s, 137; the 
clergyman’s, 144. 

Fees, moderate, 684; rules as 
to, 45. 

Fellows, John R., 495. 

Felting, 322. 

Female character, 475. 

Fessenden, Wm. P., 248, 278. 
Fiction, 102. 

Field, Cyrus W., 87. 

Field, David D., 87, 185, 280. 
Field, Eugene, 370. 

Field, Stephen J., 23, 45, 87, 282. 
Fields, Jas. T., 159. 

Finance in U. S. Senate, 278. 
Finney, Rev. Charles, 741. 
Finnerty, Defense of, 203. 
Fitzgibbon, John (Lord Clare), 
204, 283. 

Flag, the, 302, 339. 

Flanigan, John H., 284, 654. 
Flattery, 29, 311, 389. 

Fleas, 205. 

Flournoy, General, 196. 

Flower’s “Life of M. H. Carpen¬ 
ter, 127. 

Follet, Wm., 285, 700. 

FoUy, 174. 

Fools, well meaning, 585. 

Foraker, Jos. B., 286. 

Ford, Henry, 587. 

Forensic ethics, 580. 

Foreigners, law to control, 454. 
Forney, John W., 212, 213, 661. 
Forrest, John, divorce case, 509. 
“Forum, the,” 94. 

Fowler, L. N. (phrenologist), 142. 
Fox, Chas. James, 67, 183, 247, 
287 

France, 8, 413, 583. 

Frank v. Mangum, 355. 

Franklin, Chas. J., 170. 

Franklin, Benj., 1, 3, 7, 8, 102, 
182, 319, 359. 

Fraternity, 49. 

Fraud, 37, 524. 

Frederick, the great, 192. 
Freeman murder ease, 661, 674. 
French, 413, 416. 

Friends, 121, 471, 625. 
Friendship, 362, 471. 

Frost, Dr., ease, 95. 

Froude, James A., 101, 275. 

Fuller, Melville W., 289. 


GENERAL INDEX 


791 


Fullerton, Wm,, 72. 

Funeral, ecclesiastical, 149. 
Future life, 323. 

Frye, Wm. P., 288. 

G eneva Award, 212. 

Genius, 88, 111, 440, 564, 
690. 

Gentlemen, 627. 

Gerard, Jas. W., 511. 

Gerard Will Case, 56, 57. 

George, Henry, 370. 

George, Lloyd, 420, 600. 

George III, 96, 759. 

Gettysburg speech, 429, 661. 
Ghosts and shadows, 524. 

God, 177, 761. 

Goethe, 102. 

Goff, John W., 143. 

Gold, Cross of, 98. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 22. 

Goneril, 96. 

Gooch, G. P., 589. 

Goodness, 29. 

Good opinion of lawyers, 77. 
Goodrich, S. G., 256. 

Goodyear, Charles, 451. 

Gore, Thos. P., 300. 

Gould, Ashley M., 468. 
Government, 19, 34, 35, 65, 66, 
67, 140, 220, 222, 291, 292, 
297, 315, 387, 390, 399, 482, 
526, 548, 549, 612. 

Gibbons v. Ogden, 464, 466. 
Gibbs, Sir Henry, 296. 

Gibbon, Edward, 287, 416, 690. 
Gibson, John B., 121, 297. 
Giffard, Hardinge, (Lord Hals- 
bury), 164, 314. 

Gifts, for learning—legal status, 
256. 

Gilmer, Francis W., 461, 767. 
“Give me liberty, or,” etc., 328. 
Gladstone, Wm. E., 167, 279, 304, 
364, 631. 

GIovqt, Sam’l T., 90, 299. 

Grace, 30. 

Graham, David, 173, 516. 
Grandeur of Nations, 39, 160. 
Grand Jury charge, 251. 

Grant, U. S., 184, 212, 523, 679. 
Grattan, Henry, 100, 307, 500, 
502. 

Grass, 365. 

Grave, despoliers of, 299; Inger- 
soll over brother’s, 375. 
Gravity, force of, 680. 

Gray, Thomas, 22, 689. 

Great Britain, 117, 403, 464. 
Greatest men, 394; of Greece, 416. 
Greatness, 19, 767. 


Greece, 159, 170, 397, 416. 
Greeley, Horace, 280. 

Green Bag, 38, 58. 

Greene, Frank L. 549. 

Green, Henry Woodhull, 301. 
Green, Jno. Richard, 101. 
Greenl3acks, 135. 

Gregory, Chas, Noble, 487. 
Grenville, Lord (Eustice Clare 
Grenville Murray), 119. 

Grier, Robt. C., 506. 

Griffith, F. W., 112. 

Griggs, John W., 24. 

Grubber for money, 586. 

Grotius, 695. 

Grow, Galusha A., 303. 

Grymes, John R., 305, 677. 
Guiteau, Chas—Pros, by Jno. K. 

Porter, 549. 

Gulliver’s Travels, 190. 

GuUy, atty. of England, 607.' 

abeas Corpus, 313. 

Habit, 30, 91. 

Hackett, Frank W., 38, 75. 
Hackett, W. H. Y., 39, 470. 
Hadley, Herbert S., 310. 
Hagerman, Frank, 379. 
Hagerman, James, 90. 

Hale, John P., 38. 

Hale, Matthew, 12, 311, 475.' 
Half-truths, 577. 

Hall, A. Oakly, 56. 

Hallam, Henry, 81. 

Halsbury, Chancellor (Giffard, 
Hardinge), 164, 314. 

Hamilton, Alex, 58, 88, 102, 106, 
107, 139, 227, 315, 317, 398, 
402, 458, 465. 

Hamilton, Andrew, 318. 
Hancock’s consistency, 274. 
Hand, the human, 742. 

Hanford v. Archer, 72. 

Hanson, Burton, 319. 

Happiness, 366. 

Hardin, Ben., 196, 321, 554. 
Harding, Geo., 76, 322, 659. 
Hardinge, Geo., 118. 

Hardwicke, Lord (Philip Yorke), 
456. 

Harlan, John M., 483. 

Harmon, Judson, 324. 

Harris, Frank, 583. 

Harrison, Benjamin, 443, 454. 
Harrison, Wm. H., 191, 194. 
Harvard, President, 577. 

Harvey, J. G. L., 381. 

Harvey, Peter, “Reminiscences of 
Webster,” 411, 466. 

Haskin, J. F., 123. 



792 


GENERAL INDEX 


Hatred, 234. 

Hastings, Warren, 261, 639. 

Hat store (Brady), 79. 

Hatton, William, 180. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 182, 370. 
Hayes, R. B., 684. 

Hayne, Robt. Y., 126, 210, 232, 
325. 

Haywood, Harry, 363. 

Haywood, Wm. D., 70, 219. 
Heard, E. E., 423. 

Hearthstone, deserted, 80. 
Heaven and Hell, 686. 

Hemphill, John, 326. 

Henry, Patrick, 95, 190, 216, 327, 
388, 460, 767. 
Hero-worshipper, 459. 

Herschell, Farrer, 607, 608. 

High, on “Injunctions,” 488. 
“Higher Law,” (Seward), 243. 
Hil^eth, Richard, 386. 

Hill, Benj. H., 332, 366, 383. 

HiU, Nicholas, 79, 334, 508. 
Hillard, Geo. S., 459, 647. 
History, Study of, 30, 100, 102, 
173. 

Hoadly, George, 335, 739. 

Hoar, Bartholomew, 337. 

Hoar, E. Rockwood, 341. 

Hoar, Geo. F., 73, 218, 239, 338, 
647. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 32, 49, 342, 
674, 761. 

Hoffman, David, 26. 

Hoffman, Ogden, 149. 

Hog and hominy of religion, 68. 
Hole V. Rittenhouse, 60. 

Holmes, Alexander W., 94. 
Holmes, Jno. S., 112. 

Holmes, O. W., Jr., 343. 

Holmes, O. W., Sr., 182. 

Holt, John, 345, 650. 

Home, 43, 293, 304, 316, 473. 
Homer, 22. 

Homestead law, 326. 

Hooker, Richard, 174. 

Hope, 30, 526. 

Hosmer, Jno. K., 447. 

Horace, 95. 

Horton, Albert H., 348. 

House, “A man’s castle,” 466. 
Houston, Temple, 349. 

Howells, Wm. D., 182. 

Howland, Henry E., 489. 
Hubbard, Elbert, 385, 633. 
Hubbard, Richard D., 351. 
Hubbard, Thomas H., 352. 
Hughes, Chas. E., 353, 593. 
Hughes, Wm. T., 32, 360. 

Hume, David, 199. 


Humor, 339. 

Husband, second, 137. 

Husband and wife, common law 
of, 205. 

Hutchin, H. B., 187. 

Hypocrisy, 30. 

I DLENESS, 30, 363. 

Immigration, 569. 
Immortality, 154, 230, 323, 
366, 550, 635, 734, 744, 760. 
Impatience, 30. 

Imperialism, 574. 

Impotency, 296. 

Imprisonment, 177, 358. 
Inactivity, 30, 116. 

Income, live within, 167. 

Income Tax case, 149. 
Independence of judiciary, 493. 
Independent in politics, 292, 680. 
Index, value of, 56, 691. 

Indiana Ry. (O’Conor), 513. 
Industry, 362. 

“Inferior judge of inferior court,” 
etc., 112. 

Ingalls, Jno. J., 258, 365, 735. 
Ingersoll, Robt. G., 70, 195, 368, 
370, 371, 490, 739. 

Ingraham, Rob’t J., 377. 

Insanity, 297, 681. 

Inter-state commerce, 727. 

Insect brought into life by 
corruption, 92. 

Insignificance, 362. 

Instinct, 30. 

Insurance agent, 471. 

Insurance companies, 725. 
Intelligence, 578. 

Intemperance, 234. 

International law, 424, 591. 
Interrupted counsel (Parsons), 
518. 

Inventions, 432, 577. 

Irish, the, 104, 200, 544, 699. 
“Iron and brass,” 270. 

Irwin, W. W., 383. 

Iscariot, Judas, 549. 

“It can’t be done,” 292. 


J ACKASS, 684. 

Jackson, Andrew, 51, 197, 
246, 278. 

Jackson, Rev. Wm. Case, 202. 
James, Sir Henry, 165. 

Janitor (Bradley), 75. 

Jay, John, 324, 385. 


Jenerson, Thos., 3, 4, 66, 169, 387, 
391, 401, 453, 467, 617, 689, 

/o 1 • 


Jessel, Sir George, 392. 


GENERAL INDEX 


793 


Jesting, 30. 

Jews, 45, 137, 262, 627, 652, 729. 
Job, book of, 747. 

“Jones, Hank,” 536. 

Jones, Jno. P., 589. 

Jones, Nat. B., 59, 69. 

Jones, Sir Wm., 66, 235, 394, 395. 
Johnson, Andrew, 208, 664, 672, 
680. 

Johnson, Jno. G., 73. 

Johnson, Reverdy, 197, 468. 
Johnson, Sam’l., 22, 414. 

Jonson, Ben, 32, 180. 

Judges, 23, 30, 57, 206, 209, 
238, 335, 353, 392, 415, 459, 
484, 488, 593, 597. 

Judgeship, 176, 207, 640. 

Judicial officer, liability of, 23. 
Judicial faculty, 74, 593, 650, 
697.. 

Judiciary, 230, 459, 492, 744. 
Jugular vein (Metcalf), 481. 
July 4th, 4. 

Junius, 204. 

Juries, 63, 160, 161, 189, 204, 237, 
335, 383, 444, 498, 610, 611, 
620. 

Jurisprudence, 81, 178, 280, 393, 
457, 507. 

Jurist, 271, 552. 

Justice, 6, 196, 238, 262, 281, 
334, 456, 596, 613, 655, 693, 
745. 

Justice’s court, 75, 559. 

Justinian, 57. 

Juvenal, 2. 

K ansas City, Mo., 54, 104. 

Kansas, 367; Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill, 248; “Be- 
whiskered Kansas,” 284. 
Kellogg, Frank B., 396. 

Kent, James, 71, 106, 235, 317, 
397, 623. 

“Kernels of Corn,” 459. 

Key, Philip Barton, 80. 
Knowledge, 31, 35; Adams, J. Q., 
213; Benton, T. H., 213; 

Bryce, Jas., 104; Clinton, De- 
Witt, 236. 

Kenyon, Lloyd, 12, 260, 401, 423. 
Kilbourn v. Thompson, 34. 

King, Rufus, 402, 473. 
Knock-down argument, 578. 
Knott, J. Proctor, 405. 

Knox, Philander P., 406. 
Kupperman v. McGehee, 68. 


ABOR, superior to capital, 439 
655, 667. 

Ladies, a toast, 493. 
Lafayette, 14. 

La Follette, Robt. M., 615. 
Lamar, L. Q. C., 407. 

Lamb, Charles, 489. 

Landis, Kenesaw Mountain, 129. 
Lane, Franklin K., 410. 
Language, a monument, 525. 
Lansing, Robert, 417. 

Larceny, 304. 

“Last Leaf,” original of, 644. 
Last words (Coke), 177. 

Laughter, 372. 

Lauterbach, Edward F., 137. 
Law, 

Armor of, 270. 

Cannot know all, 1. 

Civil, 671. 

Codifying, 206. 

Common, 178, 237, 242, 251, 
742, 559. 

Dignity of, 265. 

Exaltation of, 40, 146. 
Guardian of liberty, 172. 
Importance of, 26. 
Improvement of, 132. 
International, 424. 

Jostling with, 177. 

How to read, 4, 6, 38, 58, 66, 
77, 91, 178, 343, 401, 696. 
Labor in, 315. 

Like deep well, 177. 
Mackintosh on, 444. 

Metcalf, Geo. P., on, 479. 
Moral compared with general, 
192, 

No security without, 49. 
Practice of, 141, 142, 197, 516 
640, 734. 

Prentiss on, 554. 

Reason of, 178. 

Restraints of, 321. 

Right in law, 237. 

Science of, 73, 688. 

Seward’s “Higher,” 243. 
Succession in, 90, 533, 537, 551, 
554, 651, 698. 

Then and now, 338. 
Uncertainty of, 42. 

United States law, 74. 

Why made, 196. 

Lawyer, 

Advice to young, 258, 295, 531. 
American, the, 525. 
Antiquarian, 180. 

Bolingbroke on, 173. 

Can’t regulate income, 206. 



794 


GENERAL INDEX 


Cushing, an intellectual, 214. 
Don’t marry a, 149. 

Duty of, 266, 614. 

Estate of, 464. 

Good Legislators, 682 
Hard work of, 756. 

Ideal, the, 5, 20, 24, 74, 77, 
238, 351. 

Intellectual honesty, 526. 
Lincoln on, 431. 

Not a cheap (Field), 185. 
Successful, 5, 86, 87, 89, 258, 
435, 579, 585, 595, 618, 619, 
700, 739. 

Unscholarly, successful, 343. 
Vacation of (Choate), 161. 
Law, Edward (Lord Ellen- 
borough), 259. ^ 

Lawsuit, 352. 

Law student, 6. 

League of Nations, 151. 

Lear, King, 96. 

Learning, 91, 625, 654, 655. 

Leary, John J., Jr., 585. 

Leavitt, John Brooks, 92. 
Lebanon, Ohio, 195. 

Leeky, W. H. E., 283. 

Lee, Robert E., 332. 

Leg, crooked, 628. 

Legal duty, 343, 390. 

Legal tender act, 134. 

Legal right, 237. 

Legare, Hugh S., 412. 

Legislator, 41, 176, 402, 459. 
Lehmann, Frederick W., 422, 430. 
Lewis, Justice, 428. 

Lewis, Wm. Draper, 426. 

Lewis, Wm. Hamilton, 424. 
Letters, posthumous, 45; study 
of, 89; men of, 275; its end, 362. 
Libel, 92, 317, 451, 456, 684. 
Liberty, 128, 132, 316, 362, 406, 
444, 445, 627, 753. 

Liberty of the press, 198. 

Libretto, interpret to me the, 60. 
Lieber, Francis, 582. 

Libraries, 31, 397; in carriage, 
540. 

Light, kingdom of, 524. 
Limitations, statute of, 687. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 134, 138, 184, 
280, 294, 369, 422, 423, 429, 
433, 434, 599, 601, 658, 663, 
664. 

Linguist, Cushing, 213; Edward 
Everett, 213. 

Liquors, prohibited, 701. 
Literature, 78, 225, 625, 628, 643. 
Literary Criticism, 259. 

Little, Lucas P., 196. 


Littleton, Thomas, 15, 177, 179. 
Lives of men worth while, 740. 
Living, the, “treat like the dead,” 
577. 

Livingston, Robt. R., 442. 

Locke, John, 174. 

Lockwood, Belva, 698. 

Logic, 627. 

Long, John D., 443. 

Looking forward, the hereafter, 
323. 

Lord’s Supper, 682. 

“Lost Arts,” 535. 

Loughborough, Lord (Alex. Wed- 
derburn), 259. 

Louisiana Purchase, 442. 

Love, 35, 121, 204, 234, 372, 375. 
Lowell, James Russell, 182. 

Luck, Law success, is, 149. 

Lying, 311. 


IIT^Ardle case, 124. 
iVlC McCall, S. W., 669. 

McClellan, Baron, 504. 
McClure, Alex K., 670. 
McCormick Reaper case, 658. 
McCulloch, Hugh, 15, 134, 190, 
216, 276, 472, 751. 

McCulloch V. Maryland, 58. 
McDonnell, John, 2. 

McDougall, H. C., 293, 552. 
McDuffie, George, 53. 

McKinley, William, 454, 628. 
McSweeney, John, 446, 448, 479 
739. 


M acaulay, Thos. B., 101, 102, 
184, 456, 457. 
Mackintosh, Jas., 444, 544. 
MacVeagh, Wayne, 63, 450. 
Madison, James, 388, 452, 

453, 454, 459, 689, 768. 
Magna Charta, 178, 597. 

Maine, Sir Henry, 49. 

Man—wants of, 9; test of a, 45; 

reasoning animal, 316. 
Manchester v. Buckner, 524. 
Mandamus, 301. 

Mantle of charity, 754. 

Mansfield Lord (Wm. Murray), 
9, 37, 41, 221, 250, 268, 456, 
457. 

Marriage, 31, 43, 625, 626, 627, 
693, 694. 

Married woman’s act, 356. 
Marsh, Luther R., 50. 

Marshall, John, 56, 104, 119, 127 
232, 274, 403, 426, 459, 461, 
462, 463, 470, 623, 692. 


GENERAL INDEX 


795 




Marshall, Thos, F., 14, 196, 465, 
477. 

Mars Hill, 427. 

Martin, Luther, 387, 467, 469. 
Maryland, lawyers paid tax for 
L. Martin, 469. 

Mason, Jeremiah, 211, 386, 403, 
470, 473, 696, 699. 
Massachusetts, intelligence of, 
146; sons of, 338. 

Massey v. Headfort, 199, 200, 
337 

Matthews, Stanley, 408, 476, 668. 
Mans V. Worthen, 84. 

Mayflower, the, 83, 752. 

Mayo V. Hutchinson, 542. 
Mechanic, lawyer a, 81. 
Mechanical philosophy of 
ancients, 744. 

“Med,” the colored girl slave, 648. 
Medicine, the best, 700. 

Meigs, Wm. M., 54. 

Melliadon’s case, 305. 

Mellish, Judge, 166. 

Mellville, Major, 644. 

Memory, 108. 

Merchant marine, 403. 

Mercy, 196, 262. 

Metcalf, Geo. P., 479. 

Metcalf, Theron, 519, 647. 
Meservey, Edwin C., 379. 
“Meyer, Abe,” 536. 

Micau, partner of J. P. Benjamin, 
45. 

Militarism, 14. 

Miller, Geo. A., 131. 

Miller, Sam’l F., 34, 60, 209, 281, 
482, 486, 487. 

Milton, John, 2. 

Mind V. Force, 522. 

Mind, the, 188; change, 766. 
Minds, old—like old horses, 3. 
“Mink case,” 237. 

Ministry, the, greatest calling, 
550. 

Missions, 272. 

Missouri, 310. 

Mistakes, 627. 

Mistakes and ignorance of Luw, 
495. 

Mob-law, 220. 

Moderation, 31. 

Money, 28, 31, 390, 548, 564, 
654, 673, 680, 724, 754. 
Monopoly, 574. 

Monroe Doctrine, 592. 

Monroe, James, 490, 497, 592. 
Montrou v. Jefferies, 1. 

Moore, Sir, Thomas, 14. 

Moral convictions, 476. 


Morgan, John T., 491. 

Morning, glories of, 747. 

Morley, Henry, 167. 

Morrow, Thomas H., 381. 
Morse, John T., Jr., 660. 

Morton, Oliver P., 494. 

Moscow, burning of, 192. 

Moses, laws of, 19, 122. 

Mother, 669. 

Motherhood, 428, 570, 745. 
Mother’s influence, 745. 
Mothers-in-law (two), 608. 
Motion, 743. 

Motley, John L., 101. 

Mules, going south to teach, 477. 
Murder will out, 754. 

Murray, Wm. (Lord Mansfield), 
9, 41, 221, 250, 268, 456, 457. 
Music, 468, 490. 

N apoleon, 184, 192, 226, 257, 
368, 387, 559, 629. 
Nation, Carrie, 741. 
Nation, the, 39, 324, 365, 494. 
National bank notes, 671. 
Nature, 161; book of, 260; 

Natural statesmen, 342. 
Natural, 156. 

Necessities, 577. 

Negligence, 75, 86. 

Negotiable instruments, 26, 298. 
Ne^o, the, 103, 672. 

Neilson, Joseph, 18. 

Nereide, the, 44. 

Neutrality, 162, 217. 

New England, 116. 

New Hampshire, 562. 
Newspapers, 390, 434. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 174. 

New York City, 680; Stock- 
Exchange, 724. 

New York State, 227; Supreme 
Court of, 107. 

Nineteenth century, 131. 

Nisbett, Eugenius A., 495. 

“No man higher than the law,” 
488. 

Non-suit, 466. 

Norbury, Lord (John Toler), 466. 
North, John Henry, 496. 

North, the maintenance of, 219. 
“Nothing to do,” 545; saying 
nothing with grace, 607. 
“Nothing to Wear,” 113. 
Nottingham, Lord (Heneage 
Pinch), 400. 

Nuisance, coal dust, 288. 
Nullification, 64, 172. 


796 


GENERAL INDEX 


O ATHS, 201, 446, 563. 

Oberlin College, 741. 
Objection to testimony, 471. 
Ocean voyage, 340. 

O’Conor, Charles, 77, 148, 321, 
507. 

O’Connell, Daniel, 91, 204, 498, 
503, 738. 

Official responsibility, 23, 354. 
Office-seeker, advice to, 189; 

responsibility of, 354. 

Octavius, 53. 

Old age and the law, 628. 

Oglesby, Richard, 735. 

Olney, Richard, 497, 676. 

Omaha Bridge case, 87. 
Opinion-Books of J. Mason, 699. 
Opinion stuck in Parson’s throat, 
520. 

Opinions, 626. 

Opportunity, 365. 

Oratory, 26, 132, 170, 174, 235, 
255, 282, 311, 370, 402, 412, 
437, 481, 521, 580, 582, 688, 
743, 765, 767. 

Oregon, 52. 

Osage Land Case, 62. 

Otis, Harrison Gray, 231, 650. 
Otis, James, 7, 515. 

P AIN, 626. 

Paine, Thomas, 262, 266. 
Palmer, Roundell, (Lord 
SelbouTDe), 166. 

Palmer, Wm., murder case, 175. 
Pantheon of America, 491. 
Parental affection, 470. 

Parents, 142. 

Parker, Cortlandt, 76, 301, 516. 
Parker, Theodore, 3, 182. 
Parkman, Francis, 101. 
Parliament, 500. 

Parsons, Theophilus (“the awfull- 
est”), 518, 519, 689, 697. 
Parsons, Theophilus, Jr., 232, 
723. 

Parton, James, 106. 

Party, 162. 

Passions, the, 311. 

Past, living in the, 17, 553. 

Past and present, 17. 

Paston, Bridget, 180. 

Pat and the Yankee judge, 521. 
Patriotism, 19, 63, 245, 320, 491. 
Patriots, 241. 

Paul, the Apostle, 426, 627. 
Peace, “character better than,” 
3, 766. 

Peck, George R., 522. 

Peel, Robert, 506, 534. 


Peckham, Wm. G., 152. 

“Pen,” something choice from 
Evart’s, 273. 

Penalty, according to offense, 200. 
Pennsylvania. Bar, 50; its .great 
men, 365. 

People, common, 27, 208; rule 
of, 575; govern, 578; or the 
judges, 737; those to whom we 
owe what we have, 742. 

People V. Mayor of Chicago, 86. 
“Pepper and Salt” (Corwin), 189. 
Pericles’s funeral oration, 325. 
Periods, Clay’s “glittered,” 169. 
Person, rights of,-399. 

Petition, right of, 16. 

Pharisee, 577. 

Phelps, Edward J., 195, 525. 
Philippines, future of, 250. 
Philhps, Charles, 250, 528. 
Phillips, John F., 531. 

Phillips, Wendell, 110, 197, 446, 
481, 502, 534, 740. 

Philosophy, 342; of Lincoln, 433; 
655. 

Piatt, Don, 189, 632, 660, 661. 
Piatt, W. H. H., 381. 

Pickard, C. F. M., 536. 
“Pickwick Papers,” 120. 

Pierce, Franklin, 212, 299. 
Pierrepont, Edwards, 537. 
Pilgrims, 13, 83, 553. 

“Pillars of the Government,” 
685. 

Pinkney, Wm., 44, 254, 398, 538. 
Pioneer, 411. 

Pitt, Wm., 135, 183, 581. 

Plato, 14. 

Pleading, special, 506, 570. 
Pleasure, 626. 

Pleasure and “Payne,” 270. 
Pledge, Kent refused to take, 398. 
Plunkett, Wm. C., 100, 166, 528, 
543. 

Pocket, hands in Evart’s, 272. 
Poetry, 102. 

Politeness, 31. 

Politics, 89, 296, 316, 353, 527. 
Political career. Sir Edward 
(?Jarke’s ambition, 166. 

Political economy, 676. 

Polk, James K., 160. 

Pomp, 3. 

Poole, Earnest, 82. 

Poore, Ben Perley, 122, 191, 196, 
632. 

Pope, Alexander, 2, 689. 
Popularity, 455. 

Population of country. 111. 

Porter, Fitz-John, 144. 


GENERAL INDEX 


797 


Porter, Jno. K., 509. 548, 549. 
Portsmouth, N. H., 474. 
Posthumous letters, 45. 

Poverty, 117, 294, 565. 

Power, 116, 318, 369. 

Power, rules the world, 354, 369, 
627. 

Practice, 692. 

Pratt, Charles (Lord Camden), 
117, 118. 

Prayer, 260, 617. 

Preachers and preaching, 68, 665. 
Precedent, 160, 240, 298, 621, 
693. 

Prentice, George D., 550. 
Prentiss, S. S., 551, 555, 556. 
Preparedness, 649. 

Prescott, James, 644. 

President of U. S., “Rather be 
right than,” 170; election of, 
educational, 595. 

Press, Liberty of, 198, 759. 
Preston, Captain, defended by 
Jno. Adams, 7. 

Pride, 363, 390. 

Principles, growth of, 18. 
Prisoner, public against, 55. 

Prize Ships, 693. 

Procedure, 69. 

Proctor, L. B., 50, 78, 110, 256. 
Prodigal son, 678. 

Prophecy, 526. 

Prosecuting attorney, 726. 
Prosecutions and convictions, 496. 
Prosperity, 3. 

Proverbs, 31. 

Pruitt, Noman, 557. 

Public sentiment, 574, 608, 748; 

opinion, 55, 110, 407. 
Pufendorf, Samuel, 695. 

Pullman Co., not liable as bailee, 
229. 

Pyrenees, 103. 

Q uarrel, 54, 434. 

Quibbling, 518. 

“Quick enough if safe 
enough,” 547. 

Queen Caroline, 91. 

Queen v. Mills, 120. 

Quincy, Josiah, 169, 211. 
Quintilian, 166. 

R ace to which we belong, 367. 
Races, intermixture of, 103. 
Radical, 291. 

Ragan, 96. 

Railroad, 567. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 179. 

Ramsey, David, 612. 


Randall, Samuel J., 12, 491. 
Randolph, John, 562. 

Ranney, Rufus P., 559, 560, 561. 
Rantoul, Robert, 562. 

Raynor, Isidor, 566. 

Reading, 31, 99, 107, 135, 157, 
176, 177, 188, 342, 364, 406, 
513, 527, 635, 746, 767. 

Real Estate, buy. 111; basis of 
liberty, 226; title to, 377-8. 
Reason, 6. 

Reasonable doubt, 646. 

Receiver, 344. 

Redfield, Isaac F., 567. 

Reed, Chas. B., 365. 

Reed, James A., 568. 

Reed, Thomas B., 143, 165, 574. 
Religion, 36, 40, 68, 70, 181, 296, 
377, 382, 470, 491, 581, 626, 
667. 

Remarks, “A few feeble, 672. 
Reports, old, 397. 

Reproduction, 428. 

Republic, 174, 222. 

Repudiation, 246. 

Reputation, 97. 

Res adjudicata, 240. 

Resources within one’s self, 102. 
Rest, in matter of, 68. 

Restraint, 768. 

Resurrection, 531. 

Retaliation, 681. 

Retrospection, 9, 164. 

Revenge, 31. 

Reverence, whatever we, 150. ■ 
Revolution, 38. 

Rex V. Forbes, 496. 

Reynolds, John H., 334. 
Reynolds, Joshua, 182. 

Rhetoric, 1, 627. 

Rhetorical displays, discouraged, 

1 . 

Rhodes, James Ford, 189, 191, 
215, 245, 278, 341, 325, 540. 
Rich, how to get. 111, 655. 
Richardson, Chief Justice, 39. 
Richards, Jno. T., 84, 430, 659. 
Riches, 31. 

Rights of mankind, 315. 

Rights to be fought for, 586: 

right and wrong, 431. 

Riley, Jas. Whitcomb, 370. 
Ringrose, Hyacinthe, 361. 

Riot, an ambulatory, 499. 

Rivers break their banks, 263. 
Robertson, George, 579. 

Rolls, master of, 167. 

Rolt, attorney, 166. 

Romans, 9th. chapter, 332. 


798 


GENERAL INDEX 


Roman history, 287; commerce, 
397. 

Romilly, Samuel, 581. 

Root, Elihii, 153, 587, 590, 598. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 438, 449, 
585; his motto, 585. 

Roscoe’s “Eminent Lawyers,” 
181. 

Rose, U. M., 628. 

Rosenberger, Jules C., 379. 

Ross John, 589. 

Rosseau, J. J., 581. 

Rowan, A. H., 198, 199. 

Russell, Chas. (Lord Killowen), 
accurate, 604; author of land 
tenure bill, 606; ambition, 
605; eccentric, 602; Clarke’s 
estimate of, 609; compared 
with rivals, 604; standing at 
bar, 604; briefing employed 
six lawyers, 604; made client 
leave court room, 602; auto¬ 
crat on bench, 606; opinion of 
Richard Webster, 75; man of 
the world, 606; spendthrift, 
606; his oratory, 608; tilt with 
J. C. Carter, 130; his estimate 
of D. Webster, 75. 

Russell, Lady, 22. 

Rutherford v. Morris, 85. 

Rutledge, John, 612. 

Ryan, Edward G., 613. 

Rylands v. Fletcher, 421. 

S AGE-goose, 274. 

Sales, Benjamin on, 46, 48. 
Sales, treatises, 48. 

Salisbury, Lord (Robt. A. T. G. 

Cecil), 167. 

Same, the, 536. 

Sands of life, 79. 

Sandwich, Lord, 269. 

Sand and waves of sea, 203. 

San Francisco, 53. 

Savannah privateers, 80. 
Savoyard (Eugene W. Newman), 
246, 492. 

Saxons, the, 564. 

Scarlett, Jas. (Lord Abinger), 2, 
157, 583, 618, 620, 696. 
Schley, Winfeld Scott, 566. 
Schmidt, Gustavus, 461. 

Schools, supported by childless, 
518. 

Schouler, James, 7, 15, 45, 215, 
245, 261, 662. 

Schurtz, Carl, 171, 440. 

Scotch, 104. 

Scotland, 199. 

Scott, Henry W., 622. 

Scott, John, 2.57. 


Scott, John (Lord Eldon), 2, 120» 
259, 469, 547, 549, 694. 

Scott, Walter, 81, 140, 162. 

Scott, Wm. (Lord Stowell), 120, 
413, 691, 693, 694. 

“Seals,” wouldn’t throw up, 546. 
Secession, 168, 197, 452. 

Selden, John, 32, 179, 216. 
Self-defense, 552. 

Self-reliance, 552, 590. 

Semmes, Thos. J., 119. 

Senate, U. S., 188, 278, 594. 
Sentiment, 592, 748. 

Serenade (Luther Martin), 468. 
Sergent’s “Life of Clay,” 170. 
Seward, Wm. H., 343, 629, 631, 
633. 

Shakespeare, Wm., 2, 32, 77 
95, 102, 103, 180, 184, 194, 
225, 373. 

“Shave me in silence,” 514. 
Sheares, Henry, 201. 

Shelburne, Lord (Wm. Petty), 
249. 

Shellabarger, Sam’l, 195, 650. 
Shirley’s “College Causes,” 38. 
Shoes, old, the best, 625. 

Sickles, Daniel E., 80. 

Simile, 455. 

Simms, 173. 

Sincerity, 586. 

Sins, the negro, 562. 

“Sits” and “lies;” not “sets” and 
“lays,” 545. 

Slavery, 15, 136, 191, 197, 299, 
407, 456, 502, 675, 705. 

Slaves, 673. 

Smiles, Samuel, 247. 

Snowdown v. Warder, 589. 
Socialism, 568, 595. 

Soldier, the common, 443. 
Somers, John, 477, 

Sovereignty of the State, 13, 54, 
64, 116, 497, 676; of the nation, 
548. 

Speech, 95; mileage of, 672; 

contrasted with reading, 673. 
Springer, Wm. M., 577. 

Squatter Sovereignty, 433. 
Stanbery, Henry, 516. 

Stanton, E. M., 658, 659, 660, 
661, 662. 

“State the point,” 520. 

State V. Harriman, 22. 
Statesman, defined, 167, 194, 

577. 

Sterne, Laurence, 204, 768. 

Star Route cases, 448. 

Siarc decisis, 72, 579. 


GENERAL INDEX 


799 


State and Federal powers, 89, 
162, 353, 393, 404. 

Statute of Limitations, 547, 687. 
Stephens, Alex A., 350, 663, 666, 
667. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, 670, 673. 
Stockdale v. Hansard, 225. 

Storm and Zephyr, 94. 

Storrs, Emory A., 677. 

Story, a touching, 663. 

Story, Joseph, 42, 57, 129, 182, 
231, 234, 255, 416, 457, 461, 
687, 691. 

Story-teller (Corwin), 190. 
Straws, 627. 

Stuart V. People, 85. 

Stuenberg, * Frank, murder case, 
219. 

Stupid, the, 524. 

Style, O’Conor’s, 508. 

Sugden, Edward (Lord St. 

Leonards), 636, 696. 

Sullivan, Wm., 231. 

Sumner, Charles, 39, 56, 121, 
160, 279, 588, 657. 

Supreme Court, U. S., 215, 282, 
452, 460, 592. 

Superstition, 103, 184. 
Suretysliip, 542. 

Sweet things in life, 35. 

Swett, Leonard, 430. 

Sword, 608. 

Syllables rule the world, 177. 

T acitus, 157. 

Taft, Wm. H., 699. 
Talfourd, Sir Thos. N., 700; 
vacation rambles on Follett, 
285. 

“Talk much, and say little,” 
684; “talked to himself,” 514. 
Talking, superior to reading, 99. 
Talleyrand, 316. 

Taney, Roger B., 467, 468, 539. 
Tappan, Arthur, 741. 

Tariff, 647, 654, 681, 725. 

Taylor, Zachary, 300. 

Tax, 117, 130, 149. 

Teacher, answered questions cor¬ 
rectly, yet got no certificate, 
272. 

Technical lawyer, ridiculed, 479. 
Teetotum of time, 540. 

“TeU her to go in peace,” 349. 
“Tell me what you think,” 488. 
Tenterden, Lord (Chas. Abbot), 
1, 257. 

Teter, Rev. J. P., 489. 

Texas, annexation of, 53. 


Thaw, Harry K., murder trial, 
224. 

“There goes a carriage with a B 
(bee) in it,” 93. 

Theory, 692. 

Thesiger, Sir Frederick, 45-8. 

Thieves, abuse of, 1, 45. 

The thinker, 59, 522, 564. 

Thomas, W. O., 381. 

Thompson v. Thompson, 356. 

Thompson’s Seasons, 204. 

Thompson, Seymour D., 187. 

Thoughts, 32. 

Threats, 591. 

Thurlow, Edward, Pitt on; Thur- 
low on Pitt, 704; barmaid’s 
baby, 704; Bancroft on, 56, 
458, 704. 

Thurman, Allan G., 184, 738. 

Ticknor, George, 209. 541. 

Tilden, Samuel J., 121, 280, 289, 
513. 

Tilgman, Edward, 58. 

Tilton V. Beecher, 43. 

Time, 312, 363; time from etern¬ 
ity, 519. 

Toast, 339, 456, 493. 

Toleration in religion, 585, 751. 

Toombs, Robert, 45,261, 350, 665. 

Tomorrow, 106, 309. 

Tories, defended by John Adams, 
5 7 

Trade, freedom of, 178. 

“Transports,” all in, 274. 

Treason, two witnesses needed, 
202, 538. 

Treaty, 242. 

Trent, Wm. A., 663. 

Trevelyan’s Life of Geo. Ill, 287. 

Trial, Brady grasped facts, dur¬ 
ing, 50; same as to O’Connell, 
498. 

Trial of case, 273, 619. 

Tribute, “candid,” 274. 

Trimbleston’s Case, 110. 

Troops, being moved from Boston, 

117. 

Trumbull, Lyman, 112, 279. 

Turning-point in Matt Carpen¬ 
ter’s life, 126. 

Trusts, 68, 316, 574; money 
investment, 724, 725. 

Truths, 184, 196, 204, 390, 594, 
626, 680, 695. 

Tyler, John, 477. 

Tyranny, 389. 

Tyrants, 11, 389. 

Twiss’ “Life of Lord Eldon,” 
257, 759. 


800 


GENERAL INDEX 


“T Tnabridged,” not in Web- 
LJ ster’s Dictionary, 479. 
Undebatable tilings, 585. 
Union, Farewell to, 46; inde¬ 
structible, 134; what is, 168, 
172; perpetual, 439; repeal of, 
504. 

United States, a client of Elhu 
Root, 598. 

United States v. Mormon Church, 
90. 

V ACATION, a lawyer’s, 161. 
Valentian, 57. 

Van Buren, John, 448, 723. 
Van Buren, Martin, 284, 728, 
754. 

Vance, Zebulon B., 64, 729. 
Vanity, 3, 32, 108. 

Vattel, 695. 

Verdicts, 298, 619. 

Vermont, virtue of, 274. 
Versitility of Wm. FoUett, 285; 

of J. Q. Adams, 12. 

Vice, 174. 

Vest, George G., 46, 54, 731. 
Victory and war, 600. 

Vidal V. Girard’s Executors, 56. 
Vinogradoff, Paul, 549. 

Virgil, 22. 

Virginian Bar, 339. 

Voight, Edward, 549. 

Voltaire, 186. 

Voorhees, Daniel W., 733. 

Voter, 193, 345. 

W AITE, Morrison R., 212. 
Walker, Chas. I., 187. 
Walker, Timothy, 736. 
Walpole, 22. 

Walworth, Reuben H. 288. 
Wanamaker, R. M., 737. 

Wants of man, 9. 

War, 592, 600, 299, war speech, 
125; the world, 151, 376, 363, 
of 1812, 558, 3. 

Ward, Durbin, 738. 

Warren’s History American Bar, 
57, 256, 481. 

Washburn, E. B., 86, 441. 
Washburn, Emory, 739. 
Washington, Geo., 3, 102, 218, 
235, 316, 388, 471, 495, 565, 
573, 612, 752. 

Washington City, malaria, 578. 
Washington monument, 406. 
Water, apostrophe to, 677. 
Watterson, Henry, 247, 408, 438. 
Wayne, Judge J. M., 411. 

Ways and means committee, 671. 
Weakness, 363. 


Wealth, 565. 

Webber, A. R., 480. 

Webster, Daniel, 52, 57, 116, 
127, 141, 158, 169, 171, 181, 
182, 209, 211, 231, 235, 252, 
274, 295, 351, 386, 411, 466, 
470, 472, 473, 526, 534, 617, 
634, 643, 656, 676, 740, 741, 
760, 763. 

Webster, Noah, 226. 

Wedderburn, Alexander, (Lord 
Loughborough), 759. 

Weed, Thurlow, 631. 

Welch, John, 276. 

Welles, Gideon, 135, 190, 279, 
674. 

Wellington, the Duke-of, 500. 

Wentworth, John, 56. 

West, the—how built up, 553. 

Whately, Richard, 166. 

“When I was a baby,” etc. 

(Brewster), 89. 

Whig dissolution, 212. 

Whig, “Every inch a,” Prentiss, 
554. 

White, Andrew D., 191. 

White, Edward D., 762. 

White, Wm. Pinkney, 184. 

White, Stanford, murder trial, 
224. 

Whitney, Hem*y C., 436. 

Whitman, Walt, 370. 

Wickedness, 367. 

Widow Wilkins, defense of, -528. 

Wife’s evidence in criminal case, 
167; hypocricy of, 399, 742, 
411. 

Wife and thirteen young children, 
679; fallen, 199; holiest word, 
368. 

Wilkes, John, 41. 

Wilkinson, E. C., defended by 
Prentiss, 321, 552. 

Will, not knowledge, is power, 
208. 

Williams, Ambrose, 92. 

Williams, Geo. H., 215. 

Williams, publisher of Paine’s 
“Age of Reason,” defended by 
ErsMne, 267. 

Williard, Samuel, 4. 

Wilhard, Sidney, 214. 

Williard’s, “Half Century with 
Judges and Lawyers,” 641-2. 

Wills, or Testaments, 144, 673, 
763. 

Wilmot, John E., 756. 

Wilshire, Geo. Wm., (Lord Bram- 
well), 89. 

Wilson, Henry, 64. 


GENERAL INDEX 


<S01 


Wilson, James; 102, 481. 

Wilson, Jeremiah M., 765. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 418; 588, his 
administration, 590; letter to 
Watterson and Harvey, 300. 

Wine, 401. 

Winthrop, Robt. C., 299, 300. 

Wirt, Wm., 176, 190, 329, 330, 
460, 767. 

Wirz, Capt., 333. 

Wisdom, 339, 414. 

Wise, Rabbi, 353. 

Witness, defiance of, 557, tilt with, 
618, rebuke to, 656; Storr’s 
retort to, 680; drunken, 184. 

“Woe unto the world because of 
offences,” etc., 430. 

Wolcott, Edward O., 143. 

Wolfe, 186, 695. 

Woman, 71, 161, 162, 369, 424, 
614, 687. 

Womanhood, 71, 110. 

Woman Suffrage, 516; profits 
man, 582, 590. 

Wood, Geo., 516. 


Woodburn, Albert, 673. 
Woodbury, Levi, 527. 621, 622, 
Words, each weighed a pound. 
756. 

Words, study of, 434. 

Work, when useful, 690. 

Work and habit, 40. 

Worldliness, 363. 

, World of Progress, 669. 

Wraxall, Nathaniel, 249, 250. 
Writs of Assistance, 515. 

Wrong and right, 431. 

“Not bound to win,” 431. 

Wrong and triumph, 578. 
Wythe, Geo., 387. 

Y elverton, Barry (Lord Avon- 
more), 67, 307, 314, 
“You may deal, but I shall 
lead,” 458. 

ENGER, John Peter, libel ease, 

318. 

Zepher, 94. 

Zouche, 728. 


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